Where You Hang Your Hat
by Commander Argus
Summary: James Possible comes to a surprising conclusion about Kim and Ron.  [ Complete ]
1. Part I

**Where You Hang Your Hat**

* * *

a/n - Takes place in June following the events of _**Blade of the Fury**_

* * *

James Timothy Possible was trying his best to get used to the situation, or 'sitch' like his oldest child used to say when she was a teenager. When she had gone to college he was overjoyed that she elected to live there at home and commute across town to class instead of living in a dorm or one of the shabby 'kiddie condos' adjacent to the campus. At first blush it seemed like a reprieve from the first steps toward having an 'empty nest.'

Now that Kim was twenty, he starting wondering if perhaps that attitude had been right after all. Still, he was the one uncomfortable, or at least he thought he was the only one feeling that way, or was he was simply being selfish?

It wasn't the thought that he was holding her back that made him uncomfortable, however. It was the turn the 'living arrangements' had taken over the last few months. He kept telling himself that the problem was his, and not anyone else's, but after a while he couldn't shake the nagging feeling that something was not quite right with it.

It wasn't that he didn't love his soon-to-be (relatively speaking) Son in law. Ron had been a lot like a son to him for longer than he could remember by that point. Early that fall he would have been with Kim for sixteen years, the last four of those as her boyfriend and in about a month and a half they would have been engaged for three. Ron was as much a part of the whole family's life as he was a part of Kim's.

What he couldn't get used to was regularly seeing him at the breakfast table, wearing old short and a tank top he normally slept in during the warm months, sitting beside a similarly attired Kim. It took him long enough to get accustomed to seeing just that on a rare occasion, especially after they were eighteen and officially (as in with his blessing) engaged, but it was no longer such. In fact, he could not remember a recent night when the two had not spent the night together. Sure, Ron still had a room in his parent's house, but, for all intents and purposes, the two of them were living together. Sometimes they would spend a string of nights at his house. By the time they started college his parents had squeezed a larger full size bed into his room so that Kim would be more comfortable there. At first he thought his slightly more permissive parents were simply providing a place for the two to 'shack up' without having to check into a hotel, but back then he could count on one hand the times they had done so over the course of several months.

Then, the previous winter, they both returned from an especially intense mission and something critical had changed. He was pretty sure what it was, but he chose not to think about it in too specific terms. For him it was one of the last few steps for Kim in becoming her own woman, one of the final remaining hurdles between her childhood in his house and becoming Ron's wife, ready to found her own family.

From that moment, save for the first couple nights where they tried to go back to their old routine, they had become inseparable once more, to a degree neither he nor his wife could have imagined before. The situation took a full one-eighty and now he could count on one hand the number of nights they had spent apart since then on one hand.

When it had started, he was somewhat shocked about it, and, as usual, it took Anne running interference for the kids to keep him from saying something foolish.

* * *

It was late February and even though they had only been gone for just about a week, they were having trouble getting back into their routine. Oh, they were trying their best, but something remained wrong. For one thing, Kim hadn't been able to sleep properly. It wasn't nightmares, it was just a simple case of not being able to get fully comfortable. She endured two nights like that before finally giving in on the third night, grabbing a pair of jeans and a jacket and driving over to Ron's house just after midnight. With only a quick polite word to his parents, she mounted the stairs, went into his room, doffed the pants and crawled into bed with him. That proved to be the cure both of them needed.

The very next night Kim wanted to return the favor, but somehow didn't want to confront her Dad over the whole deal. It wasn't so much to play him, as to simply avoid the conflict. Their plan was a simple one:

Kim pretended to doze against Ron as the movie droned on. This was perhaps the fifth time she had seen The Godfather Part III and it still didn't make a great deal of sense to her. She cracked an eye open long enough to watch Michael Corleone fall over dead from his chair, then stood up and stretched.

"Come on, Ron, time for bed." She grabbed his hand and pulled him up, leading him out of the family room.

James possible leaned forward, expecting to see the two of them heading toward the front door for their usual prolonged goodnight kiss. Instead he saw them turn right and head up the stairs. He sat there for a moment in confusion, then leaned toward his wife who had been camped out on the far end of the sofa enjoying the movie. Anne was actually a closet _Godfather_ nut.

"Didn't I just hear Kim say she was ready for bed?" he looked over the reading glasses he recently started wearing, staring at the empty doorway the couple had disappeared through moments before.

"Yep." She replied simply, pulling her legs up on the couch.

"Isn't that her usual signal to Ron it's time for him to go home?"

"Yep."

"Then why did they just go upstairs together?"

"Well, unless Ron left something up there he needs to take home, I suspect they are probably getting ready to go to bed."

That confused him even more.

"He's going upstairs to go to bed…with my daughter?" It wasn't like that hadn't actually happened before, but it was usually something that was either asked for or just simply ended up being a practical necessity every now and again. They had just simply gone up there like it was something they did every single night.

Anne just gave him the hairy eyeball. "Yes, you're daughter's fiancé…your_ adult_ daughter's fiancé just went upstairs to go to bed with _our _daughter." She changed the possessive to make a point.

"You mean they are going to sleep together?"

Anne knew he was deliberately using the double meaning of the phrase. "James, what do you think the two of them did all that time alone on that one particular mission? They spent the better part of a week with just each other for company. I don't think they simply held hands and chatted the whole time."

"I…kind of didn't want to think along those lines." He suddenly looked sort of sad.

"James, they're both twenty. They have been together almost four years and when they finish school they are getting married. They are every bit in love as we were at that age and they managed to wait a whole lot longer than we did."

"And you're not concerned about this?" He looked at the ceiling, wondering exactly what was already going on up there. Not that they would hear anything down here anyway. The house was well built and practically soundproof (it had to be considering Anne's lung power.)

"What? That Kim is in a deeply committed relationship with the best guy in the world and they just happen to have finally developed a healthy sex life to boot?"

"Smart alec."

"Just where do you think she was this morning?"

He stopped and thought about that for a minute. He remembered her going to bed, yet she was already gone when he got up the next morning. "I just assumed she was on a mission."

"She was, in a manner of speaking, or have you not noticed she hasn't gotten any good sleep since she got home. I suspect she left sometime around midnight, while we were otherwise occupied, and she went over to his house and slept with him, by both definitions of the phrase." She paused, looking up at the ceiling herself. "Granted, I have to admit, I expected they would have started this a long time ago."

He sighed, realizing he really didn't have all that much say in the matter any longer. "I don't think I could have taken this back when they started dating. They were only sixteen then."

"They almost did, you know. I guess you just didn't notice what really almost happened during that one trip to Florida."

"What?"

She jerked her head toward the stairs. "Those two tried to do it three nights in a row, then on their third try, chickened out. I noticed a couple things and confronted her about it and she let me know the whole story, but given all the chances they've had, with all those weekend trips up the mountain, those summer vacations together and they still waited until a couple weeks ago?"

"I know, I know, Anne. I'm just…I'm having a hard time seeing Kimmie-cub as…just Kim. I keep thinking I need to say something or do something, but I keep coming back to the fact that the only other choices are to watch them go someplace that might not be as safe, or to watch her move out for good, all because I have this silly notion about what goes on in my house."

She nodded her assent. "This is far preferable than if they had, for instance, done this when they used to go parking. Really, I think it's a good thing. Sure, maybe they lost a little something by not waiting until they got married, but I don't think it's going to be as big a deal as they once thought."

"I still think I need to do something about this." He said, getting up.

Anne was genuinely shocked. Did nothing they had just discussed mean anything? "What? Are you going to barge in on them and throw Ron out of the house?"

"No, I'm going to take you upstairs and do to you what I think Ron is doing to Kim right now." He grinned evilly at her.

"Why James, I knew you were a smart man, but you are an absolute genius!"

* * *

He looked over the top of his paper at the two. They would occasionally look at each other and smile, looking all the world like a young married couple rather than two kids who were three quarters of their way through college. The more he thought about it, the more he came to realize he was wrong about one thing. Ever since that night in late February, there hadn't been a single solitary night they had spent apart. He only figured there had been nights like that since they sometimes spent a few nights at his house for whatever reason. Sometimes they were called on to care for his little sister overnight. Others that may have simply been where they were when it was time for bed. Still, they spent the lion's share of their nights in her room. It could have been as simple as who had the more comfortable bed. In all the years he had known him, James had never once set foot in Ron's room, so he had no idea what it was like up there.

Neither of them had any idea he was working up the courage to say something. For one, he didn't know exactly how they were going to take it. For another, he knew that once he did, there was probably no turning back. Even if they didn't do anything that very day, that week, or in the next month before they both turned twenty-one, it would sow the seed and eventually lead down a path he would have never considered even six months ago.

"Did the two of you sleep well last night?" He let the top of his paper tip down, though he didn't completely let it fall to the table.

"Sure, Mr. Dr. P."

He could tell their bare feet were dueling under the breakfast table. Things had 'quieted' down after a while between the two of them, but that didn't mean they would forego their fun from time to time. James had come within a hair's breadth of knocking on their door the night before until he heard the tell-tale sounds of what they were doing. Embarrassed that he might have disturbed them, he simply left them alone. The fact they had responded to their call to breakfast with 'We'll be down in a minute' instead of 'come in, we're decent' suggested they had either resumed their activities early in the morning or had simply slept in the buff (or both.)

"What Earth shattering plans did the two of you have for today?" He had given up suggesting the two of them actually get a job over the summer. Kim had tried that the year before, working alongside Monique at Club Banana while she was back for the break. That had…not turned out well, though somehow the friendship survived and recovered. This year was what the two of them were referring to as 'the last summer.' Next year, they were graduating, entering the real work force (well, Ron would be. Kim would likely be going to graduate school full time.) Mid-summer they were getting married and Ron was already working with an architect to build them a nice home. With his allowance from his trust fund, which had grown from modestly successful to rather healthy, he didn't actually have to work. In fact, he made enough for the both of them to be rather comfortable over their last extended vacation before the real world set in.

The look the two of them shared made him wonder if they were going to run right back upstairs the moment the elder Possibles left the house. Their final semester of their Junior year had ended just over a week earlier and so far they had taken full advantage of their time off. Even fair-skinned Ron was already getting a tan from their trips out to the lake. For the first time in her life, Kim could actually be described as having a 'robust' tan, though some of that may have come from a bottle. She was a red-head after all.

"I just thought Ronnie and I would just take it easy today. I know, I know, that probably means we're going to get called to a meeting at GJ or something, or even get called on a mission, but that's the plan. It's supposed to turn stormy this afternoon, so I don't really want to get caught out on the lake." She exchanged another look with Ron, confirming what at least part of their 'taking it easy' entailed, or so he imagined. He immediately mentally smacked himself for having a dirty mind. They may have been like that the first couple weeks…

…_no, stop thinking about them like that. What you have to say to them is for their own good, not your old fashioned-ness._

"You're not thinking about us getting jobs for the summer, are you?"

"No, no, absolutely not. Unless you are getting bored." That brought another smile and glance. Was he that lost in Anne back then?

It was time to plunge ahead. He had already stalled long enough that Anne was already on her way to the medical center. In a few short minutes he would have to head out to his job as well. With the twins gone to a cyber-robotics camp for the next six weeks, that left the two of them alone in the house. To him it still felt like leaving two hormonally challenged teenagers alone.

"If it gets too boring we'll head to the mall, or I can get Ron to teach me how to play some of his video games."

"I think I might have an idea." This was it, just about to the point of no turning back.

Both of them gave him their rapt attention.

"Maybe it's time the two of you started looking for your own place to live."

There, he finally said it. It was out in the open. Yet why did the two of them look like they had been slapped across their faces?

* * *

Kim Possible and all related characters© Disney 


	2. Part II

**_Where You Hang Your Hat: _Part II**

* * *

Later that morning, Kim lay stretched out on the bed, facing the front of her room, watching as Ron paced back and forth. Both of them were still trying to absorb her father's sudden pronouncement at the breakfast table that morning.

He really said nothing more than to make his suggestion. Finishing his coffee, he got up and excused himself before going out to his car, leaving the two of them sitting stunned at the breakfast table. It wasn't until their cereal had turned to mush and Kim's coffee was fit only to make an iced latte before they actually said anything.

"Did we make too much noise last night?" Ron finally asked, still staring at the back door.

Kim buried her face in her hands. "No more so than we have the last couple months. I just can't believe he said that."

"I thought he was happy you were still living here." Ron muttered, leaning back in his seat.

She put a hand on his thigh and gave it a light squeeze. His legs were hairier than they looked at first glance since his blonde hair didn't show up against his skin all that well. "Honey, I don't think that's whats got him like this. I think it finally sank in that you're living here with me."

That gave him pause. There never really was any discussion about them 'officially' living together, it had just happened. The fact he had never moved more than the clothes he actually needed, or any of his furniture into their room really didn't change anything. In that moment he realized that it was actually true. For all intents and purposes, they were living together full time.

They went back up to 'their' room, but their original plans were pretty much shot. With the house empty and the local equivalent of a monsoon set to envelope the Tri-City area later, they pretty much intended to spend some special time together. Even though the house was well insulated, they had always been somewhat reserved when they were together, even during the intense first few weeks. Having the place to themselves they could cut loose a little bit.

"It almost feels like we're being kicked out." Ron said, sitting down beside her on the bed. "So what are we going to do?" He lightly stroked the groove in the small of her back.

She crossed her arms, putting her chin down on them. Part of her was trying to enjoy his touch, but for the most part her mind was awhirl. "I guess we need to go apartment shopping. Honestly, Ronnie, I've got no idea how to go about it. I've lived in this room my whole life."

"Do you think maybe we should, I dunno, stop living together? Wow, that sounds kind of strange saying it out loud. I never really thought of it like that. Living together. Wow." He repeated.

Kim shook her head emphatically. "No." She rolled onto her back so he could knead her tummy. "That would feel almost like we're breaking up at this point."

"But you said you've always lived in this room. It seems a shame to screw that up just because we're, like your Dad says, 'living in sin.'"

That brought a little smile to her face. "He does not say that."

"Yeah he does. He keeps asking me when I'm going to make an honest woman of you."

"That's not the same thing, and I don't think he's said that once since you…well…moved in. You're right, though. It doesn't seem fair. Now if he wanted you to chip in and help with the mortgage, or the food, I could see that."

Ron leaned back, but kept his hand on her tummy, carefully running his fingers in circles just so it wouldn't make her ticklish. "Do you think we screwed up?"

"How's that?"

"Well, we kinda did this without asking, you know. True, he did sit down with me after a couple nights and laid down the law, but, well, we just kinda…started."

* * *

Breakfast that first morning of their new arrangement wasn't as uncomfortable as he thought it would be. Ron was thankful Kim insisted on the pajamas when her mother shook him awake by the shoulder to call them down to breakfast. He was also thankful the covers were up since the bottoms of said night clothes were stuffed down at the foot of the bed. Only an hour earlier Kim had awakened him for a little wake-up call of her own.

With the exception of a confused look Jim and Tim gave each other when they witnessed the two climbing down the black iron staircase together, nobody acted as if anything were out of the ordinary. Ron had spent the night enough that his appearance at the breakfast table was nothing special, even though before it had always been after a night on the couch or later in the guest room.

"You kids still planning on going to the mountain this weekend?" James asked from behind his fresh copy of _The Examiner_.

Such an…ordinary…response wasn't what either of them had been expecting. They were ready for anything, from the silent treatment to having their ears bent for their brazen decision. "We were going to head up there straight after class tomorrow night." Kim said as she dug into her pancakes, all the while running her bare foot up and down Ron's shin.

Her father let the upper half of his paper tip down. "Says here it's supposed to rain all weekend, with the possibility of ice. Doesn't sound like a very good weekend of skiing."

Anne set a plate of pancakes down in front of her husband. "I don't think that's what they had in mind for their trip, dear." She smiled at her daughter, who blushed crimson.

"Actually, that was the plan. I love having the chance to ski when there's no super-freak chasing me down the mountain."

"Or nosey chaperones making sure it's one to a bed." Her mother said, sitting down with her own plate.

"Mom!" She turned even brighter red.

"Well, if the weather turns nasty, I'd just as soon the two of you stayed right here."

Both their mouths hung open for a moment. "The two of us?" Kim asked dubiously.

"I want what's best for my kids, and that includes my future son-in-law." He put the paper down and started buttering his pancakes.

"Go easy, James. We don't want your cholesterol getting out of control." Anne warned.

"Between the butter and the bacon, if my cholesterol was going to get out of whack, it would have done so a long time ago." He said, ignoring her and putting three pats of butter on each pancake before reassembling the stack and pouring strawberry syrup on them.

Kim and Ron just looked at each other. Then she glanced at her Mom, who smiled back at her. A bit of understanding crossed her mind. Anne Possible had always been on her side when it came to Ron and their attempts to be together were part and parcel of that.

Later, while Kim was taking her morning shower, James climbed the stairs up to the room where Ron was lacing on the hiking boots that replaced his old sneakers. "Ronald, I need to ask you something."

"Uh, sure MrDrP."

"Now, I'm not going into that business about whether you love Kimmie-cub or not. That's just obvious. I just want to know what your intentions are."

He shrugged slightly. "KP and I are getting married when we finish college. I was thinking the fourth of July, but we haven't hammered out the date yet."

"I mean in the near future. It seems the two of you have gotten…quite a bit closer."

"I…I really hadn't thought about that. I mean, until KP told me what she wanted yesterday after class I really never planned to do this." He inclined his head at the freshly made bed. Kim was right about the open access the family had to each other's rooms. Her mother simply came up there just as he put on his pants and made it, fresh sheets and all. "I love you guys like my own folks, but I don't know if I'm be real comfortable with all this. I mean, if one of you had walked in on us last night…"

"Ronald, I'm not one hundred percent comfortable with this situation myself, but that's because I'm just embarrassed knowing what you two are doing. It doesn't bother me that you two are having sex. It's normal and natural and you're both adults. Now, I do think some ground rules are in order, since this is my house."

"Yes sir."

"First, let's be reasonable. What you did last night is perfectly fine since it was the right time and the right place. That said, I want the two of you to keep what belongs in the bedroom in the bedroom. The couch is in the family room, if you see where I'm going with this."

Ron nodded emphatically.

"Second, while the two of you are adults, I hope you're being responsible. Both of you have a bright future and it's too soon for the two of you to bring a child into this world."

"Believe me, MrDrP, we are."

"Finally, there's the issue of privacy. I've got the general idea of what you two are doing and I'm just going to leave it at that. When the two of you are together up here, then close and lock the hatch as well as the hall door. That will save any of us any extra embarrassment of walking in. Also, Anne and my bedroom is off-limits for the same reason, unless you're invited."

"I agree completely. MrDrP."

"Ronald, when are you going to start calling me Dad and Anne Mom like we asked you to?"

He rubbed the back of his neck. "It just feels weird since that's what I call my Mom and Dad. Maybe if I called you Dad P or something."

James slapped his thigh as he got up. "That sounds good. Maybe one of these days I'll break my habit of calling you Ronald."

"MrDrP, uh Dad P, did you mean what you said about us staying up here this weekend?"

He cocked an eyebrow at the younger man. "The two of you were just going up there to spend time together, weren't you?"

Ron blanched just a tad. "We were going to ski a little, but yeah, the main point was making love."

James nodded. "If the weather does turn bad, I'll feel a lot safer if the two of you were doing that up here than out where the roads will be frozen solid." With that he headed down the stairs, passing Kim on her way up, still drying her hair with a towel.

* * *

Classes ended in the early afternoon that day, so they rode back to Ron's house to pick up some more clothes. It wasn't like he was moving in with her but they did intend to sleep together that night and over the weekend if the expected rains came. If not, they were going to head up the mountain anyway, if for no other reason than to actually be alone.

"I don't get it, KP." Ron said as he sat on 'his' side of the bed that evening, taking off his boots.

"What's that, Baby?" Kim was already in bed, wearing her old purple tank and sweats pajamas, going over the rough draft of a paper she was preparing. Somehow Ron thought the only thing missing was a pair of glasses. That, of course, was silly since her eyes were perfect but the visual seemed incomplete without them.

"All these years I've been worried about your father sending me to a black hole if he ever caught us doing this and this morning he's like all cool with it and everything."

Kim put down her notes. "Ronnie, tell me something, what was it he said the night of the moodulators?"

"He wanted you to be happy, or he'd send me to a black hole."

She shook her head. "No, he said you'd be in deep trouble and when you asked how deep he said black hole deep. He would have just done the usual angry father things, but he never even said a thing to you about kissing me or even sleeping with me, which, let me tell you, if that thing hadn't gone haywire we were going to do that come hell or high water and I don't think your breaking up with me would have stopped me. But it was about you making me happy." She leaned across the bed and ran a hand down his side once he pulled his sweatshirt off. "I think you've done a pretty good job of that."

"It just sounded so funny listening to him laying down ground rules for us making love."

"They make good sense. Guess with that second one he still doesn't know I'm on the pill and the first…think how many times we came close to doing exactly that on the couch at your house."

"Um yeah." He slipped off his boxers and started getting under the covers.

"Ronnie?" Kim said, putting her homework away for the night.

"What's that, KP?" He reached over and turned the light they had set up for his side of the bed off.

"Don't even think of taking this the wrong way, but do you think we could take tonight off?"

He sat back up. "Something wrong?"

"Well, kind of. Baby, I'm a little sore…if you know what I mean."

"I didn't think we were that rough. Maybe the first time…"

"Honey, we went at it for more than four hours last night and this morning. More than that, I would like to try and get eight hours of sleep for once. We do have school to think of."

"Okay, sure KP." He laid back down, sticking his hands behind his head.

"You're not upset are you?"

He gave a sort of facial shrug and said. "No."

Kim raised an eyebrow. "You sure gave in pretty easily."

"Kim, what we do is making love. It's not about getting off. Well, that's a real big part of it, but I don't want to do it for my sake alone. If I pressed you to do it when you don't want to, that's just using you and that's not what I want."

"Oh Ron, that's so sweet." She turned off her touch lamp and threw an arm across his chest.

"Uh, I've kind of got to admit I'm a little sore myself. Back muscles, that is."

"We wore each other out." She played with the light blonde triangle of hair that extended downwards from his belly button. "Gonna be cold tonight, think maybe you should put on your jammies?"

Silently he got up and put them on. They were already laid out on Kim's puffy blue chair. "Hey, maybe when we…recover, maybe we could try something on this. Your Dad said to keep it in the bedroom and this is in your bedroom."

"Dirty boy." She held the covers back to let him into the bed. Wrapping her arms around him again, she started kissing him passionately.

"I thought you didn't want any tonight?" He said when she came up for air.

"I said we weren't making love tonight. Didn't say anything about making out."

* * *

Anne Possible stared at her husband as he cowered behind his desk. Stared wasn't quite the word for it. She was giving him "The Glare."

"Do you think it might have been wise to actually ask me before you decided it was time to kick my daughter out of the house?"

"I did no such thing. I only suggested that maybe it was time for them to start actually looking for their own place." He drummed his fingers on his desk, looking from side to side. He knew he was in trouble when she showed up at the Space Center looking for him. She almost never went there. That was his world, as much as the Medical Center was hers and for the most part the two never mixed.

"Oh? Then why did Kim call me at work this morning, almost to tears asking me why? James, you know Ron is working on a place for them when they get married. What's wrong with that?"

"That's not what I meant, honey, and that's more than a year off. I just thought they would be more comfortable living in their own place."

"Oh you did? Did you not stop to think how Kim might feel living in her own room? The same room she's lived her whole life?"

"Anne, I never thought that would mean having a boyfriend come to live with her."

Blue eyes suddenly lit on fire. "Ron…is…not…just…a…boyfriend, James. Maybe you haven't noticed, but he is the single best thing that has happened to her in her life outside of this family. So what if they're living together in our house? He was welcome to live there before."

"But what kind of example is that going to set for Joss? She's going to be here in just a couple weeks and part of the reason Slim is sending her to live with us is to calm her down a little. She worships the ground those kids walk on and if they're upstairs…doing their thing…"

"That's not the same thing, James, and you know it. If Jocelyn had somebody in her life like Ron I don't think Slim would have worried one instant about it. I think Kim and Ron will set a fine example for her. Plus I'm sure she is fully aware that she is seventeen and our kids are twenty. That's a big difference from their perspective."

He sighed. Just as he thought that morning, there was no turning back from this point. The damage had been done, and that probably meant he was going to be the one sleeping either on the couch or in the guest room that night. "Okay, Anne. I'll talk to her."

"You need to talk to both of them. If you had said no after the first time, this would have been different, yet you waited four months to say something. I think it's too late to stand on morals, if that's the reason behind all of this."

With that, she turned on her heels. "I've got a late procedure this afternoon. I think it might be a good idea if you took the two of them out to dinner."

"I'll fix something. I'm not totally helpless in the kitchen, plus I've been hankering to try out my new grill."

Anne shook her head. "I said you should talk to them. Not poison them." She held up her hands, then dropped them in frustration before walking out the door, muttering about idiot rocket scientists.

* * *

Kim Possible and all related characters © Disney 


	3. Part III

**_Where You Hang Your Hat: _Part III**

* * *

"KP, maybe we're going about this the wrong way." Ron pulled their car into a space at the third apartment complex they visited that day. Normally, Kim would be the one to drive, even though they had come to the understanding that since it was the only vehicle between them, it really belonged to both of them. Still, the car had been a gift from her parents and from Wade for High School graduation and she preferred driving herself. Ron tended to make her just slightly nervous. Plus, she was using the fold-down computer console trying to research what spaces were available, with limited results.

"I'm kinda casting around in the dark here, Ron. I called the housing office on campus earlier and they said we qualified for a Senior Dorm this fall, but they wouldn't allow us to live together in one unless we were legally married."

He leaned on the steering wheel while she wrapped up the lists she was currently looking at. So far they had seen two apartments. The first was only a couple blocks from the campus, but they had both nearly bolted when they saw it. It did meet one some of their expectations, the first that it was within walking distance of Middleton College and they were willing to lease the place for just one year, but the inside left much to be desired. There was actually less floor space in the entire place than Kim's bedroom. It consisted of one small bedroom and a combination kitchen/living room. The walls were a color that was supposed to be 'egg shell' but looked more like stained white. The last straw came when Kim opened the thin, shabby drapes in the bedroom. It looked out on the unit's dumpster.

They politely thanked the manager for showing it to them, explained it was quite literally the first place they had looked and said they would get back with him if they were interested. Neither of them had to say to the other that there wasn't the least bit of interest involved.

The next place was significantly nicer, but it was much closer to their homes than it was to the school. It was mainly one very large room, with a small space for a bed on an open balcony type arrangement. The openness appealed to both of them, though it seemed it would be hard to have guests and still maintain their privacy. There was also the problem of Kim wanting to have her own room. She knew they wouldn't be fooling anyone, but she wanted to at least maintain the illusion that they were technically roommates at that point.

There were other stumbling blocks they hadn't figured on as well. Even though they were legally adults, both places wanted their tenants to be at least twenty-one years old, or at least the person signing the lease. Granted, that was only seven and eight weeks away for them, but there was another deal-breaker. The nicer apartment was only available with a minimum three year lease. Ron had been meeting with an architect working on some townhouses in a new suburb of Middleton and was by then committed to that project. Their 'starter' home would be ready just about the time they were planning to get married. True, he would have more than enough money to keep paying for a long-term lease, but that just seemed wasteful.

The worst thing they were running across was the price of housing. His trust fund allowance had risen exponentially over the last couple years, but both places they had seen would take a major chunk out of it, leaving them very little for groceries, utilities and that one major bugaboo of college students, books. It was looking more and more like he would have to ask his father for an increase just to cover their living expenses. Either that or one or both of them would have to get actual jobs. Considering the fact they still went on the occasional mission and they also wanted to keep themselves free to concentrate on their studies, they really didn't think that would work. Kim was planning on taking an extremely heavy class-load in her final year and Ron still had to struggle to keep his grades up.

"It's looking more and more like we may have to bite the bullet and go back to living apart." Ron said sadly, still leaning on the wheel.

Kim put her hand on his thigh and looked at his eyes. "No, honey. One way or another we're going to make this work. I know we didn't plan it this way, but let's face facts. We've been together constantly since February and neither one of us wants to go back to the way things were. Like I said earlier this morning, that would almost feel like we were breaking up."

"But we're not, KP. I love you and I'll love you if we had to spend every single night apart until we get married."

She put her head on his shoulder and looked like she was about to start crying again. It just wasn't like her to be so emotional, but facing the prospect of one of the biggest changes in her life was hitting her far harder than either of them expected. Before they had gotten dressed and started their admittedly half-hearted search they did make love briefly, but the tears were already starting. Kim called her mother and talked for a good half hour while Ron was in the shower and he could tell she was still upset when he came back up to 'their' room.

He thought actually going out to look would help. Instead it just led to both of them feeling frustrated and alone. It was like getting to a resort town and finding out there were no rooms available and having to sleep in their car. That almost happened to them one time during their now-annual road trip the previous summer. Fortunately Wade was able to find someone who owed them a favor and put them up for the night that time.

"Do you think we screwed up not asking Mom and Dad about all of this? Really, we didn't give them much choice in the matter." Kim's mood was punctuated by a rumble of thunder. The first large drops started spattering against the windshield, hinting at the downpour to come. It had bee gray all day, but it turned darker as the afternoon wore on.

Ron kissed the top of her head as the rain steadily got worse. Normally weather like that was very romantic to him, but there was simply too much on his mind to think that way at the moment.

"I don't know, Kim. After your Dad sat down and had his man-to-man with me, I thought everything was hakuna. I was kinda freaked out about it a little myself, but then he got so cool with us. You don't think it's the money thing, cause if that's it, I'm sure I could pitch in for room and board and stuff."

"Maybe, but, unless it was Dad trying to make a point about something, that just doesn't make sense. Between the two of them, well, let's just say if I wasn't on a full academic scholarship they still wouldn't have any trouble sending me through MC. It's just weird."

"Weird? How's that?"

"Well, for about the first month…let's just say things were a little out of hand there for a while. Plus, we're not the quietest people, you know. Just, I don't know. Last night and this morning, that was the first time in just over a week. It's….why now? Why when we already had a self-imposed deadline?" She looked up at the three story building they were parked near. They didn't expect much, considering it was only the third place they had been to. "You sure we want to be doing this?"

"I don't want to end up being forced to take that rat's nest we looked at first, and I bet the closer we get to school starting back up, the harder it's going to be to find a place."

"True. Hey, what about Paul?"

One of the drawbacks to being such a tight-knit couple and being commuter students was that the two of them didn't fit into the school social scene all that well. They both made a few friends, but so far only Ron had made one as close as they had during high school. That fact was hammered home to Kim when she found out Monique wasn't coming home that summer, preferring to stay in Durham, North Carolina in her new apartment. Felix wasn't coming back either, since he was staying with Monique until he had to go back up to MIT in the fall.

Paul Resnick was the son of the man who owned a popular Kosher delicatessen near Middleton College. At first Kim was concerned how he would react to her, being from a family of very conservative, traditional Jews, but he always treated her as good a friend as he did Ron. He had the attitude that he would follow his faith as his heart said, but didn't try to force that on others. He took Ron being a Reform Jew and Kim being Christian right in stride.

His father was another issue. To him, the couple were nothing more than good customers, and in the Deli he treated them that way. It was different the few times they had been in his home. That was one of the rare occasions Ron would actually wear his yarmulke outside of Saturday services. There was never a cross word, but Kim always felt distinctly uncomfortable there.

Then, during their Junior year, Paul had moved out of his family's home into a fairly large apartment. He cut off his traditional forelocks and adopted a more mainstream conservative appearance, though he still wore his nicely embroidered skullcap all the time. He did have a roommate for a time, but he graduated, leaving the younger man to fend for himself with the rent. Knowing that would happen, he offered to let Ron move in to help with the financial burden.

"That may have been good before we started, you know, living together. I know he's down with us, but you know what his father's like. It'd probably be worse than what we're going through with your Dad right now, even though Paul technically lives out on his own."

"I guess you're right. Okay, it doesn't look like the rain's going to let up any, so it's now or never."

By the time they got to the manager's office, they were wishing they had put off seeing the apartment until the weather cleared. The rain was still coming down in heavy droplets and they were soaked to the bone just five steps from the car.

The building itself was older, but it was in very good condition. Instead of having a front door, the main access to the apartment was through a central hallway. The carpet was reasonably new and the lighting was good and they could smell paint that had probably been put up just in the last month.

The space was still a little on the small side, but all of the views were of the surrounding mountains. The downstairs consisted of a great room, a real dining room and a kitchen that, while small, had relatively new appliances. Upstairs were two bedrooms joined by a single bathroom. The only fly in the ointment there was the lack of a proper shower stall, though the large, deep claw-foot tub had an antique looking brass shower curtain. They exchanged glances. Both of them were 'shower' people, preferring baths for relaxing rather than bathing.

The rooms were semi-furnished, pretty much lacking only beds. Since there were two rooms, they would each be able to set up their own spaces. Closet space wasn't the best, but it was comparable to what they were used to. The manager left them alone in the kitchen to talk it out, probably thinking about going to find a mop since the young couple was still fairly damp.

"What do you think, Kimbo?"

She sort of half-smiled. "I could live with it. I'm not really happy about the bathroom, but like you said, it's only a year."

Ron eyed the range with a more professional eye than Kim did. "Not exactly a gourmet kitchen either, but I can make do."

"It's a safe kitchen." She giggled slightly.

"Eh, how dat?"

"There's not enough room in here for both of us to cook, so I'll have to stay out of your way."

Ron gripped her hand. "Don't get too down on yourself. You handle yourself pretty well in here any more."

She gave his hand a good squeeze. "Only when you, or Mom, or Nana are looking over my shoulder the whole time. Well, I know it's only the third place, but the rent is livable, we're not that far from the campus and they'll take a one-year lease."

"Part of my says jump at it, KP, but another is saying, you know, too good, somehow."

"Yeah. When's the other shoe going to drop. Is there something we're missing? The manager already said it's okay that we're just twenty if we have good references."

"That's just it. It feels like we're forgetting something. Maybe we should just take the guy's card and make a list. There's got to be something better out there somewhere."

"Yeah." She looked around again. "But this is the only unit they have available. I'm willing to bet by tomorrow it'll be spoken for. Besides, I bet we could both fit comfortably in that tub." She smiled and leaned her hip up against his. "Sure beats that little tub in my bathroom, or the shower in yours for some nice, hot soaking." She purred the last.

The manager chose that moment to reappear, giving Kim the impression he might have been eavesdropping. "Well, what do you kids think?"

She was still holding Ron's hand, and over the last few years they had formed a sort of language all their own with a series of squeezes and touches. They both had come to the conclusion they had better jump at the chance. It was one of the least expensive places they had on their list and it fit most of their criteria. They could live with the slight deficiencies since it was a temporary arrangement anyhow.

"We'll t…" Kim got out of her mouth before the manager pointed at Ron's shoulder.

"What is that, that freaky thing?" He asked, his face a mask of disgust.

He glanced to the side, realizing that Rufus had climbed up there.

"Oh, that's Rufus. He's a naked mole rat."

The man just turned up his nose. "I'm afraid we don't allow pets." He said disdainfully.

Kim and Ron exchanged a look, realizing _that_ was what they were forgetting. With one more mutual squeeze of their hands, they stood up straight and started for the door.

"Thanks for your time, but Rufus is family and I'm afraid this place just isn't family enough for him." Kim said as they headed back out into the hallway.

* * *

James looked at his watch again. Anne had called some ten minutes earlier to tell him she was just getting into her post-op procedures and would be home in about an hour. Her coming home close to midnight he was used to, after all, she was a doctor. Yet, without there being a mission, Kim and Ron were almost always home on weeknights except Friday. He even gave Wade a call. The young man was actually still at the Space Center, working on one of his projects, but he hadn't spoken to the couple all day.

Dinner was out of the question. He had hoped they would come home soon when he got home earlier that evening so he could take them to that nicer Italian restaurant chain. He thought about calling them, but didn't want to chance getting into a conversation with them about what he said over the phone. He wanted to take it back right to their faces, to give them his blessing to live there until the wedding. It was his own selfishness that was behind it, nothing more. It wasn't 'better for them' to find their own place. They really did have just that one last summer before their real adult lives set in and he really didn't want to take that away. The two of them had given the world so much, they deserved it.

Then the evening wore into night and the night into the realm of 'past bedtime.' Finally, with Anne due home in the next half hour, he picked up the phone and dialed the cell number that would reach Kim's wrist Kimmunicator. The little screen Wade had included on the phone flickered to life, though the picture remained dark.

"Daddy?" A sleepy voice answered.

"Kimmie-cub? Are you okay?"

"Yeah. We were asleep. Is everything alright?"

"It's fine, Kimmie. I was just worried when you didn't come home."

There was a few moments of silence following that. Finally Kim spoke again. "We're at Ron's house. I'll talk to you later, okay, I'm really tired."

"Okay, Kimmie-cub, love…" the line went dead.

James sat down hard in his easy chair. They hadn't come home because they had gone to spend the night in Ron's room. Of course, there was always the possibility they had been called to baby-sit Catherine Jean, but even he wasn't capable of that level of denial.

He put the phone back in its cradle, lost in thought.

* * *

Kim Possible and all related characters © Disney 


	4. Part IV

**_Where You Hang Your Hat: _Part IV**

* * *

"Good morning!"

Kim blinked back sleep as the figure leaning over the end of the bed pulled back the curtains over the side of the bed. It took her a couple of moments to remember she was in Ron's bed instead of her own. A light snoring sound told her that her bedmate had yet to be awakened by the bright light streaming in. The previous evening's storms had already disappeared wherever dark clouds fled to when they were done dumping their soggy load on their hometown, leaving the morning bright and blue.

Realizing that Ron's mother was in the room gathering their dirty clothes from the floor, Kim did a quick check of herself. It used to be that Jean would never actually come into his room when it was occupied, but the last couple times they had been there she simply came in unannounced. Fortunately, she was still wearing the short t-shirt and gym shorts she usually used for pajamas at his house in the summer. Slowly it occurred to her that they had both gone to bed early and were quickly asleep, except for the unexpected call she had gotten around midnight. At least she was spared the embarrassment of the last time she had spent the night in there. That morning, both of them were already awake and enjoying what she liked to refer to as 'a little wake-up call' when his mother appeared.

Jean Stoppable had pulled an apparent complete one-eighty on how she viewed their relationship after they had become engaged. For the longest time Kim had thought the woman was just as old-fashioned as her father, but came to realize her earlier distrust had much more to do with the nature of her interest in her then-only child. Once it was clear they were deeply committed for the long haul, she was as welcome as any other family member.

"What time is it?" She got up on her elbows, careful not to disturb the covers in case Ron had chosen to forego any sort of night clothes, as he often did during the warm months since they had taken to sharing a bed each night.

"It's a little past seven." Jean said cheerily. "Do you two want breakfast? Gene is downstairs having his usual bagel, but I can make something if you're hungrier than that."

"That'll be good, please and thank you." She let her head fall back on the pillow as her soon-to-be mother in law left the room, carefully closing the door behind her. Thoughts of the day and night before came rushing back to her as she rubbed her forehead and eyes.

They had looked at two more apartments before going to the steak house for dinner, then they wandered aimlessly around the Upperton Galleria, more just to be different than anything else. For the most part, the more upscale mall still had the same set of stores as the Middleton Mall, with a few much more expensive ones thrown into the mix, but they weren't there so much to shop as to have some time to quietly think about things.

So far, nothing they had seen was appropriate for them. The last two places, while nice, were just too expensive to even consider unless Ron was able to tap into more of his money. She was sure there was enough, but he had learned his lesson the hard way with his funds on several occasions. Even though he was technically a millionaire, Ron had flip-flopped completely the other direction, becoming something of a skin-flint, with the one exception of what he did for her. He didn't want to dip any further into his trust fund than absolutely necessary, a fact that pleased his father immensely.

Kim had taken over driving after the mall, taking a more roundabout route through the hills instead of simply getting onto the interstate. In the end, they took almost a full hour to get back to Middleton instead of the usual twenty minutes. Even then, she ended up driving around town before heading back to the suburb where both of their homes were. Since the car ran on a nearly inexhaustible cold fusion cell, it wasn't like they were wasting highly expensive gas or spewing out pollutants doing so.

It wasn't until she put the thing in park that she realized she was at Ron's house instead of hers. It was pushing eleven o'clock, so she just shrugged it off to being preoccupied and they both went upstairs to sleep.

Ron must have been feeling much the same as her. Normally he would feel a little frisky when they switched where they were spending the night. Instead they climbed into bed almost wordlessly and went to sleep with just a goodnight kiss.

She was about to doze back off, despite the fact his bed was nowhere near as soft as hers and was a little lumpy to boot. Suddenly her eyes snapped open as she remembered the call from her father. At the time she was kind of tweaked for being awakened from a deep, comfortable sleep, but with her mind rested she came to realize just what their actions may have looked like.

Kim sat up again, nudging Ron by the shoulder. "Ron, come on, wake up."

He rolled onto his back and looked at her. One hand went to the small of her back as he stretched under the covers. "Morning, babe. Want a little wake up call?"

"Not now." She swung her legs out of the bed. She felt around with her feet before she realized once again she was not in the room she was accustomed to. There was a pair of slippers there, but they were probably shoved under the bed or sitting in the bottom of his closet since it had been a couple weeks since they had slept there.

She did a few stretching exercises that she tried to do every morning when she could. They certainly helped when she had been sleeping in a strange bed. She sometimes wondered why, when they were supposedly trying to split their time between both their homes, they usually simply stayed at her house. One of the reasons had to be the bed. Even after a couple years, the mattress on Ron's full bed just wasn't so well broken in, and where it had been, it was in the middle, since he had the habit of gravitating there when he was left alone. In order to squeeze the larger bed into the room, it was also shoved up against the wall where his window was. Since they had already 'decided' which side of the bed they would take (it was never a question that was ever actually asked, they just started one way and it stuck) that put Ron up against the wall. That in itself was fine with her, but if he ever had to get up during the night, he had a tendency to climb over her, making darn good and sure she was just as awake as he was.

All in all, she was a great deal more comfortable sleeping in her own bed, even if she needed him by her side to fall asleep.

With no classes to go to, Ron had fallen quickly out of his habit of rising quickly. There was nothing like having somebody else with you to make sure you got up on time. They always said they would only sleep in a couple days once exams were done and summer vacation began, but that promise usually was worth just about as much as the paper it was printed on. They had gotten to the point where they shared absolutely everything, and that included bad habits.

He tended to wake up in stages. First he found his way to the middle of the bed in his old worn spot, stretching as he went. Normally Kim liked watching him do that, even if he was in pajamas, or boxer shorts like he was that morning. Ron would never be 'ripped' but his musculature was significantly more defined than it had been in his mid teens. He was best described as strong and lean, having a runner's body. Granted, Kim had to keep a firm hand on the amount of free Bueno Nacho he put away, or he would quickly get his doughy paunch back. She paid lip service to saying she'd love him even if he was actually fat, but she far preferred him the way he was. Then again, if he did follow his chosen profession after college, who would trust a skinny chef?

Oh, they only had to sample what he was capable of.

He finally made his way to the 'exit' side of the bed. (Is it even possible to get up on the 'wrong' side when there was only one way off it?) His big feet hit the floor and he scratched himself in that most manly of ways. He smacked his lips a couple times with his eyes at half mast, then wiped his pillow flattened hair into an approximation of his usual style (or lack thereof.) "What's wrong, KP?"

"I think we may have done something ferociously wrong last night." She confided, sitting down on the floor to stretch her legs and back. It was pretty obvious that she was in at least partial tweak mode as she was throwing herself into the morning mini-workout pretty hard.

"Unless I slept through it, I don't think we even did anything last night. Not that I could actually sleep though that." He quickly amended when she shot him a withering glance.

"That's not what I'm talking about. It's the fact we ended up here."

He scratched his head and started toward the bathroom, wanting to take advantage of the fact she hadn't already beat him to it. He hesitated in the doorway, leaning against the jam. "I kind of figured you came here because you didn't want to deal with Dad P last night."

She let go of her foot and turned to face him. "Was I that obvious?"

"S'ha. We spent twice as long at the steak place as usual, since you normally like to eat, pay and get out so they can turn the table. We drove all the way to the Galleria where you just looked for two hours without trying anything on, then you took the scenic route home but didn't even try to hold my hand, or go to the bluff like we used to. I just assumed you were waiting him out so we could hit the rack before he called or something."

Kim just stared at him for a moment. Sure, he wasn't a quick wit and still had a tendency to be oblivious about some things, but he had hit the nail right on the head.

"He did call. It really didn't dawn on me until this morning, but he was expecting us to come home last night."

"Well, we did, kinda." He said. "Look, you want I should go ahead and hop in the shower, or do you want to share one?"

"We'll share." She got up on her feet and started stripping out of her night clothes. She was still in the underwear she'd worn the whole day before and was feeling somewhat skuzzy. "That wasn't really the point, honey. I know both places are really home to us, but we do spend most of our time there. I should have called after dinner or something. I bet he's upset. Come on, close the door and get done, I need my turn in there."

They picked up the conversation as they scrubbed each other. It was something they had started doing for the romantic aspects of it, but as time went by they found it enjoyable for simpler reasons. For Ron it also gave him a few extra minutes of snooze-bar time since it took just a tad more than half the time for them to get ready in the mornings.

"Rats. Just the old shampoo." Kim griped. She knew Ron wouldn't mind it, but she was so sick of lavender. "What we really should have done was to be home when he got off work so we could talk to him about it. I think that's what Mom was trying to get at on the phone, but I was just too upset about it for that to sink in."

Ron was rubbing the soap all over his scalp. She couldn't understand how he could do that, but it seemed to work for him. "KP, don't be so hard on yourself. I saw first hand how put out you were yesterday. I don't blame you a bit for wanting to stay away for the night."

"Well, I do. Her in the light of day, it feels like I turned into a little girl and ran away just because I didn't want to face him."

"To borrow one of your phrases; so not the drama. We're not quite a mile away as the crow flies, and we're almost twenty one. It's not like you broke curfew or stayed out all night with a strange boy, and what if it had been a mission? If it wasn't for the fact he called last night I bet that's what he would have figured."

"Unless he called Wade first and found out we weren't on one. You didn't hear his voice last night. He sounded just like a little boy that just lost his puppy."

They switched places so Kim could rinse out her hair. "We could drive over to the space center, talk to him." He suggested.

Kim opened the door and stepped out, toweling off her hair and wrapping it up. "I don't know, Ronnie. I'd hate to mess up his day if things are worse than we're thinking."

He followed her out, shutting off the water. "I don't see how they could. Listen, KP, all he did was suggest it was time to start looking. Maybe you're reading way too much into it. Plus, have you considered that maybe he was right? On top of that, what if this is something that he's really given a lot of thought and he really doesn't want us to go, but he knows we eventually have to. It's not like I want to still be living there when we do get married. What if our townhouse isn't ready in time? I never quite envisioned carrying you across the threshold into that house, as much as I love the place."

"All the more reason we all need to sit down like adults and talk about it."

They both stared at each other while they brushed their teeth. A couple towel clad bumps later they came to one decision. "We most definitely need a bigger bathroom."

"Yup." He said with a mouthful of toothpaste foam. "What's your folks' bathroom look like?"

She paused to think and suddenly realized in all the years he had been coming into her home he really hadn't ever seen it. "It's bigger than mine. They had it done when I was about eight or so. There's a big garden tub in there, and they've got two sinks." To illustrate her point she gave him another light bump with her backside.

With all the other morning rituals out of the way, despite the lingering anxiety over their current situation, they finally gave each other a proper good-morning kiss before getting dressed. Kim followed it with a long hug, burying her face in his shoulder. Even though his final growth spurt had been somewhat sudden when he was seventeen, she still though it so odd that he was half a head taller than her. Not that she was complaining. What she did have to complain about, though, was the fact he hadn't shaved in three days by that point, though she kept it to herself for the time being. Still, he would look so funny with a beard.

Gene was sitting at the kitchen table when they came down, doing a very good impression of Kim's Dad by hiding behind a copy of _The Examiner_. The similarity ended when he folded it up and put it down as they approached. James Possible wouldn't surrender his copy until he had read it cover to cover at least once.

"I thought I heard the two of you come in last night. To what do we owe this honor?" he smiled warmly at the two. Kim gave him a light kiss on the cheek as she sat down and picked out a blueberry bagel from the bowl in the center of the table.

"It's a long story." Kim explained, cutting it in half and putting part of it on Ron's plate.

"Well, I'm not needed in the office today, so I've got plenty of time."

Kim glanced at Ron, who was already busy spreading chunky peanut butter on his breakfast. For an instant she wondered how she could love a man who didn't like creamy. They were doomed to buying two different jars for the rest of their lives.

"I'm afraid I was a little upset with Daddy last night, so we decided to stay here."

"Everything okay at home?" He asked, concerned. "I noticed the two of you were pretty quiet last night. Jean didn't have to get up and calm Catherine down this time."

Kim flushed red. Almost a month ago they had gotten lost in the moment and the next thing they knew there was a two and a half year old demonstrating who the real queen of lung power was. The Stoppables had taken it all in stride but Kim wasn't able to look them in the eyes for a couple days. "We were kinda tired, so we slept pretty hard all night."

"That's good to hear, but it still doesn't tell me what's on your mind. What were the two of you doing all day. I drove by your house and I didn't see your car in the garage."

"Well, that's part of what's going on. We spend the better part of the day apartment shopping."

Gene looked at her for about a minute as the gears clicked into place. "This is kind of sudden. I didn't think the two of you were going to do that until your townhouse was ready." He was part and parcel of the process Ron was going through getting the place built. Since he was the trustee, he was the one who had to free up money when it was needed to speed the process along. In the past, he had been as tight fisted with the fund as Ron was with his cash, but buying a home was what he considered a wise use of the money, so he was quite pleased with the progress of the project.

"It's sudden because yesterday morning, Daddy said it was time for us to look for one."

He nodded, having already guessed at the real impetus of their search. "Being quite honest with you, Kimberly, I have to say, I think he might be right."

"You do?" She paused between bites of her light repast, staring at her future father-in-law.

"Yes. I'm happy to let the two of you stay here as long as you think you need to, and I'm sure it would have been nicer if you had waited until the wedding, but let's be realistic. Ron's mother and I have talked about this. You've been engaged for almost three years, you spend almost every waking moment together outside of your classes, and now you spend all your nights together. The only reason we haven't said anything is because you spend most of your time at your house.

"Really, if you think about it, it's not really fair for the two of you, and it's not fair to the rest of us in this situation. Neither family is about to have an empty nest. Heaven knows, at this rate I have to deal with this for another eighteen years, if I last that long." He patted his chest. His doctor was growing more and more concerned about his heart and it was likely he would have to undergo some kind of procedure in the near future. That was one of the reasons Kim and Ron were already CJ's god-parents.

"I think you're right, Gene." Kim agreed. "It's just, it seemed to come out of the blue, and I know it sounds kind of selfish, but I love my room."

"I'm sure you do. I remember back when the two of you first got engaged. Ron talked about how the two of you might get a place together your senior year. Well, that's a couple months off, you know."

Ron polished off the last of his bagel half and started to reach for another, only to have his hand lightly slapped by Kim. "Wow, guess it hasn't sunk in yet we're going to be seniors again. BMOC – Booyah!"

"You know it's not going to be like it was in high school, honey. We're going to be working harder than we ever had to before." She chided, tearing into an orange. "So, like I said, we've been looking, but the only places we found we like either cost way too much or they wouldn't allow us to keep Rufus."

Gene patted her hand. "Don't worry about the cost, though don't get carried away. It's only temporary and you don't need the Taj Mahol. It took us three months to find this place when we moved here from Denver. You don't have to jump at the first place that strikes your fancy. There's always some little detail you will overlook and you'll end up miserable because of it. Take your time. Even if James gets a wild hair and actually kicks you out, which I think is just about as likely as my boss is going to show up on my doorstep and make me a vice president, you will always have a place here. Look, just go home this afternoon and tell him that you took his advice and went looking. That sounds like all he was asking."

Ron leaned on the table with his elbows. "Well, at least I hope we can find a place with cable."

Both Gene and Kim rolled their eyes.

* * *

Kim Possible and all related characters © Disney 


	5. Part V

**_Where You Hang Your Hat: _Part V**

* * *

"Kimmie-cub, I'm sorry. I was being selfish yesterday morning. I've thought about it, I've talked with your mother and we've agreed that there is nothing wrong with the two of you living here together until you get married."

James gripped the rearview mirror of his Jaguar and turned it so he could look into his own eyes. Of course there was a vanity mirror on the sun visor, but being a man he never really thought about it, especially when there was a handy mirror already there out in the open.

The problem was he really didn't mean all those words that spilled out of his mouth so easily while he was alone in the car, sitting in traffic on the expressway. In reality, he no more wanted the two of them living in that situation anywhere, be it in his house or in their own place. Yes, he would be the first one to admit he was a hypocrite. Granted, he never actually lived with Anne until the day they got married, but that was just about the only thing they had waited for. They took trips together, sometimes stayed at each other's homes overnight. Really, the only difference was the fact Kim and Ron were that way full time.

He found himself asking the question whether if he had to do it all over again, would he have waited for the wedding for everything? It would seem so noble and right to say yes, but, in a fit of personal honesty he had been feeling, he knew that he really didn't regret any of it. What's good for the goose…

That didn't change the way he felt. There was a nagging wrongness to the situation he could not really put his finger on. It was the fact he could not articulate that feeling that kept allowing him to talk himself out of his earlier resolve.

Really, he would have preferred his precious daughter had remained a virgin until her wedding night, regardless of the fact her parents had not been. He wasn't the least bit angry at Ron for deflowering his girl, or at least he wasn't when he really got down and thought about it. No, that wasn't being honest either. He had forgiven Ron for her loss of innocence. There was a difference there. That meant at one point he did hold some sort of animosity toward him over it. Still, all of that was in his own mind, and when he came to terms with that, he could put those feelings behind him, realizing how much he did love the boy anyhow.

It just seemed so strange to have to say those words when he actually got home. About a month earlier they finally sat down and hammered out the date for their wedding. They were going to do it on the Fourth of July they following summer. At first they wanted to do it immediately after graduation, but a large number of their oldest friends expressed skepticism about actually being able to attend, since most of them would be finishing up their college careers as well at that point. Independence day had been Ronald's idea and they quickly agreed to it.

What struck him as odd, at least for him, was that by officially allowing the couple to live together in his house until then, they would actually be like that for more than a year. From his perspective, that seemed like an awfully long time, though it had, in reality, been going on for almost four months. In that time, despite his wish to avoid it at all costs, he had accidentally walked in on them on several occasions. Without banishing himself completely from her room during that time, he was sure it was going to happen again. Perhaps that was part of his discomfort.

He did grin slightly, though. Perhaps the thought about what was going on in the third floor loft made both him and Anne a little friskier than they had been in the last couple years. Back in February, during the big ice storm that crippled the Tri-city area over a long weekend, the kids had turned in not long after dark, considering there wasn't much more to do with the power off. With a little devilish smile, James got up from his place near the fire and did something that had not been done in several years. He shut and latched the pocket doors leading to the den. He poured a little glass of scotch for each of them and cuddled in front of the blazing logs for some time. In the process, both of them started discarding their clothing, one little bit at a time, until they broke one of the cardinal rules they had just set down for the younger couple. What made both of them feel even dirtier was the fact they had a fireplace in their bedroom. Still, that one was small and was gas powered. There was something special about a 'real' fire, with the logs crackling and occasionally sending a cascade of sparks up the chimney as they made love there for the first time since Kimmie was a baby.

Maybe the recent turn in the kid's relationship wasn't so bad after all. Their relationship was as deeply committed as anyone who was already married. Sure they were just twenty, but so was he once. He only wished he had something like his daughter had found, like what Ronald had found in his daughter. By the time they actually tied the knot they would have been engaged a lot longer than even he would have thought possible. He always assumed they would have a long engagement, but the more he thought about it now, the more he thought it had gone on long enough.

Even before they were dating, they did seem sort of like a married couple. They even dated, though they didn't call it that then. Those were the kinds of dates he wanted her to have at that age, where they were out having fun instead of doing things that would be appropriate later (as in now.) Anne may have had a 'what are they waiting for?' attitude about the physical stuff, but he was starting to feel that way about the big picture.

Still, the date they had chosen was a good one. That way they would be in a position to take on the rest of their lives together (though weren't they pretty much completely together already?) They both paid lip service to saying it wasn't about Ron's money, but by the conditions of his trust, if he got married to her after they turned twenty-one he would get all of it. If they were as careful and wise with the money as they had been over the last few years, then they would literally be set for life, even if they both didn't have careers in mind. With Ron working, plus having that kind of resources, Kim would be free to pursue the doctorate she always wanted. There was no doubt in his mind she would have achieved that anyway, but the path they were on was a good one.

The traffic started moving again. He twisted the mirror back so he could see behind him, but he kept replaying what he was going to say to them in his head. He hoped they would be home. If not, he'd simply call them. If they were over at Gene's house, he would simply drive over there. He would rather be able to sit down with them in his own home, hopefully with Anne there as well.

He really stuck his foot deep into his mouth on that one. When she finally came home late the night before, she was still visibly upset, though she didn't rip into him as much as he thought she would for driving the kids off to Gene's house for the night. She counseled that it was actually wise on Kim's part to do so, giving herself some time to cool off. Still, the air was a little chilly in the bedroom that night, and it wasn't because the thermostat had been turned down any.

As much as he loved his wife, there were some real differences in the way they thought that came up from time to time. It didn't become clear until later just how much she was trying to steer the kids together. Then, when it finally happened and they were actually dating, it surprised him how cavalier she could be about their sexuality. Granted, she was perfectly happy about them waiting, but by the same token, she was not concerned about their near misses. If that had happened when they were still kids, he would have been genuinely upset about it, to the point he might have taken it out on Ron, at least verbally and could have put the kibosh on the whole relationship.

He had come to realize just how wrong that would have been on his part. There was good and there was bad about them being together, but the good outweighed the other by so much that the bad really didn't matter so much. It all boiled down to him being uncomfortable from time to time.

He made the last turn into his subdivision. He was about an hour early getting home, but Wade had already wrapped up what the two of them had been working on and didn't want to get started on their next assignment until the next day. The young man was busy at work with an artificial intelligence and would likely be at the space center until he couldn't keep his eyes open, but the real work involving ion powered drive systems was coming along nicely.

James sighed in relief when he saw the internally modified PT Cruiser sitting in the garage as the door came up. Kim, and most likely Ron, would most likely be there.

* * *

_Earlier that day:_

It seemed a little funny to be in Kim's room, even though they had only spent the one night away from there and had been gone less than twenty-four hours. The reality of their new sitch really hit home when they got up there and realized it wasn't so much their room, but Kim's room…Kim's childhood room.

Her bed was exactly the same size as Ron's. It was nothing more than a standard 'full' bed, one official size smaller than a queen, yet being rather small, they always had enough room for each other. It helped that they spent the greater part of their time taking up less space than Ron's old twin bed.

Yet now it looked so small. It really was meant just for one person. Until they had started sharing it, Kim always stacked a pair of King-sized pillows right in the center. The few times they ended up in it together before they started making love those long pillows were always enough for them. Now there were two queen-size pillows on each side, making it officially a couple's bed.

It wasn't quite lunch time, but neither of them was the least bit hungry. Kim had gotten over a lot of her earlier upset, especially after the talk they had with Ron's father over breakfast, but seeing the room brought it all back for a moment. She lay down on 'her' side and curled up with Pandaroo, while Ron sat beside her, gently rubbing her back with his open palm.

Kim turned onto her back and twined her fingers with his. "I'm going to miss this room."

"I am too, and I've only 'lived' in it for a few months. I can only imagine how you feel, since you've been in here since you got out of the crib."

Kim reached up with her other hand and pulled him down to her by his shoulder, kissing him fiercely. He wrapped both arms around her body as he gave into the kiss. It was clear and sunny outside, so it was unusual for them to be indoors at a time like that, but neither wanted to be anywhere but there. Kim closed her eyes and tilted her head backwards as he placed small kisses on her neck and her ear, burying his face in her deep auburn hair where it covered her left ear.

Some thirty minutes later, as they lay entwined beneath the covers, bathed in the afterglow, Kim brushed back his hair, looking into his eyes. "Do you think this may be our last hurrah here?"

"Only if Dad P is really kicking us out. You heard my Dad, it's going to take us a little while to actually find a place and I really don't see Dad P getting all in a big hurry about all this." His fingers brushed the small of her back. "Maybe there isn't even a place for us to hang our hat and we'll be stuck here until our place gets built anyway."

"Actually, baby, I think both our Dads are right. Just think what it would be like if Nana knew about this. Remember how she was when we went down to her place for Christmas?"

"Nana was a lot cooler with us than you think. That was just her way."

"Yeah, but that's Daddy's way too, and what we did…I don't mean this." She put her forehead against his, "I mean not giving him any real say in the matter was ferociously wrong. That was Nana's house and this is Mom and Dad's house."

Ron laughed softly. "I think I heard your mother cheering that first time we came up here."

Kim echoed his laugh. "Don't think that was cheering, baby. Think that was something else. Okay, we're so not breaking up, ever, but do you really think we should go on like this? We can still go away on the weekends and all."

Ron rolled onto his back, looking up at the slanted ceiling. "I think that would have worked after the first week, but now, I really don't want to do that. We're a part of each other, always have been."

Kim nodded, putting her head down on his shoulder. "Then I want to find a place, a place we can call our own. I don't care if it's that little closet near school or a mansion across town. This was my room, that was your room. I want a place that is ours, not something we've taken from somebody else, even if that somebody else is our parents. When Mom and Dad get home, I want to tell them that we're going to look for something and as soon as we find it, we're going to move there. If they want us to sleep apart until then, which I really don't think they do, we'll do that. If they do, that'll give us all the more reason to find a place."

"You think we can actually find something good? You're kind of picky sometimes."

"Picky? I like that one place we looked at, if they guy hadn't been a jerk about Rufus."

"Yeah. The little guy's upset about coming out at the wrong moment. He liked that place too." He leaned back toward her and gave her a little kiss. "I still liked the thought of that bath tub."

"The newer places seem to have decent bathrooms. I think there are lots of couples out there that can see the benefits of a large tub. Don't worry, we'll find something." She wrapped her arms around his back and pulled him closer.

* * *

The house was oddly quiet when James let himself in by the garage door, making him think perhaps the kids weren't there after all. If they were called away on a mission, Wade would simply bring their new flyer in by remote. The old one had been destroyed over Greenland, but he wasted no time constructing a third one (the original was just a prototype with conventional jet engines and was slow, noisy and had a very limited range.) If they were home, he would have expected the television to be on. If Ron had some faults, one of them was being glued to the screen, especially if the afternoon cartoons were playing on channel 152. He didn't know how the young man could stand the things, cartoons made his eyes itch.

For a moment he considered sitting down in his easy chair and reading through the paper one more time. He discarded the notion, since he had read it cover to cover that morning before work. Anne was giving him a partial 'silent treatment' so he had plenty of time to occupy himself with reading.

Sighing, he mounted the stairs. With the house apparently empty he decided to go up to his study located in the brick tower centered above the house. There he could see the distant hills from the large, circular window mounted on one wall. He could also log onto his computer and chat with some of his friends. Chen and Ramesh were all excited about discovering a new, very large black hole. He wasn't much for their brand of astronomy, but they were old friends and their discussions really didn't revolve that much around work.

He chuckled slightly, thinking that he could joke with Ronald about the new discovery. It had been many years since he last made his jesting threats about sending him to a raging collapsar if he did wrong by Kim. In fact, the last time he could actually remember doing so was their first real planned date, when he had Doctors Eng and Michaels come over to mimic fitting him for a space suit. The poor boy had taken it all seriously and was scared out of his mind, prompting him to back off from it pretty much for good, though they did joke about it from time to time. Maybe Chen could fax over some of the pictures and he could write "Honeymoon Destination" on it. Ronald would certainly get a kick out of that.

The entrance to the tower was through a small hallway that was created by partitioning off part of the attic. That was how Kim's loft room had been created when she was a baby. So she wouldn't have to take the narrow attic stairs, he had a metal and wood staircase built that went directly into her room, but the door from the hallway had been left in place. As he walked by on his way to his private inner sanctum, he thought he heard soft voices. It appeared they were home after all, perhaps working on her computer.

Happy that he would be able to start apologizing and offering to have them stay after all, he opened the door and walked right in…

* * *

Kim Possible and all related characters © Disney 


	6. Part VI

**_Where You Hang Your Hat: _Part VI**

* * *

"Ronald, is that any place for a gentleman's hand to be?" The words slipped out of James' mouth before he could stop himself. He was already mentally berating himself for just walking in on them. Even though it was about four thirty in the afternoon there was always the possibility that he could have walked in on something much more embarrassing than seeing Ron with his hand a touch too low on Kim's hip. It had already happened a couple times, but that was in the early morning and late at night.

Ron grinned a little weakly, his hand creeping ever so slowly up from its place on the curve of her backside. He was sitting on the extra chair they had brought up so they could both work at the desk, watching as she perused some apartment ads on the internet. Kim paused the list she had been looking at on her computer and got up, crossing the room and giving her father a big hug.

James momentarily forgot everything he had been planning to say to the two of them since discussing the matter with Anne over the last twenty-eight hours. Instead he was getting the same type of embrace his daughter had always given him. He was expecting a great deal of anxiety and even some anger from her instead of an outpouring of love.

"So, what have the two of you been up to today?" he asked once she let him go.

They glanced at each other, both of them blushing lightly, though he either missed that part or blocked it out. "We've been talking about things, about each other, about you and Mom, about Ronnie's folks." Kim said, turning her desk chair around and sitting down. Ron leaned on the back of his chair, mostly looking at Kim, just as he almost always did. James marveled at the way he seemed to worship her, as if, even after being together over four years he still couldn't believe how lucky he was. He wasn't lucky, he was just right. Right for her, she was right for him. All around just right.

He sighed, his shoulders drooping slightly. One way or another he had to charge ahead. "Look, I'm really sorry about yesterday morning. I was out of line…"

Kim held up her hand, then reached over and took Ron's. "No, Daddy, we're the ones who are sorry. We put you in a position you never thought you were going to be in. It was ferociously uncool for us to just move in together like this without even considering your feelings."

"Kimmie-cub, really, I would much rather see the two of you together like this than not."

She shook her head. "After that mission…" She gripped her fiancé's hand even tighter. "…all we wanted was to be together. I guess there was some notion in the back of our minds that it was so important that we confused it with acting like adults. In the process we ended up doing something that's clearly made you uncomfortable."

"But I'm the one who was uncomfortable, Kimmie. I've thought long and hard about it and that's really my problem. It's just so hard to come to terms with the fact you are really growing up." He sat down on the corner of the bed, facing his 'kids.'

"Daddy, there's a reason you feel that way. What we have been doing, well, I can't say that most people don't, but there are plenty of people like you in the world who don't think it's right and proper. Then there's the fact we're really only twenty. We can't even go into a bar to get a drink yet, not that we'd want to." Kim had a couple of experiences with alcohol, neither of them truly pleasant after the fact. Ron had learned to appreciate wine, though that was more of a professional interest, considering his culinary training.

"Kim." From time to time he remembered that, under the control of a 'Truth Ray' she was forced to admit she hated being called Kimmie-cub. "I know I sometimes see you as just a little girl with freckles and pigtails." He nodded toward a picture on the small table she used as her nightstand. She was around five or six at the time, standing on the beach of Lake Middleton with Ron at her side wearing an inflatable water ring. "At the same time, you have probably been the single most mature young woman I have ever known. You had to be to be able to do what you did. Age is such an arbitrary thing. It's not about how many years you have been on this Earth, it's about how you act."

"That's what I'm trying to say, Daddy. When all this started, it wasn't because it was the right thing to do, it was because we thought we could get away with it. When we got home this morning, we talked about things, and one of the things we agreed to was that, while this was my room, it's really just _my_ room. I wanted to hang on to that while still being able to be with my Ronnie." She gave his hand another squeeze, looking him in the eyes.

"What Kim's saying, Dad P, is that we think it's time we had a place that was ours. Not mine or hers, but ours." Ron returned her look, smiling softly.

Kim looked at the floor, her cheeks flushing once more, deeper this time than they had earlier. "There's also the other thing. We can be…passionate, to put it mildly. Even though we've been together for several months, here at home, the old home, and at Ron's we always feel we have to hold back. You know…"

"Being quiet?" James asked softly, understanding what she was trying to say. Then he chuckled softly. "Actually, Kimmie…Kim, your mother and I have learned to be that way for a long, long time, considering you and your brothers were living here too. That's just part and parcel of living as a couple with other people. I know talking about this is really embarrassing to you, but imagine if you were living in an apartment. The people who hear you there won't be your family."

Amazingly, Kim got even redder. "I hadn't thought of it quite like that."

"Listen, Kim. Your mother and I love you like all the world. We love Ronald too, and we want the two of you to be happy. As I said earlier, I was out of line yesterday morning. This has always been a very close family and I have to accept that you are now an adult and want to do adult things. Your mother has been after me for years to accept that. That' why she talked me into giving you my blessing for that first trip you took together. Now, I've got a general idea what may have gone on then before the trip turned into a mission, and what may have gone on with the trips since. I don't really need or want to know specifics, but we are all family here and that means we take the good and the bad. When it all comes down to it, I'm the only one who has had a problem with this.

"There's also the fact, when I really looked at it, that I was the first one to suggest the two of you actually go out and find your own place. When you step back and look at it, I was literally telling the two of you to 'shack up.' A couple years ago I would have never even considered such a thing. I had this old-fashioned notion the two of you were going to wait until you got married, though I thought that may have come sooner."

Kim looked at Ron again. "That kind of was the plan, but you know, like that poet said, 'best laid plans' and all."

James smiled a bit at that. He always liked Robert Burns, and had even privately composed his own version of "To a Mouse" that involved a certain lab rat he knew back in this own school days. Granted, it involved a tiny, rat sized battle suit with a working plasma blaster, but it still held a warm place in his heart. "Well, that's all water under the bridge. Kim, Ronald, I think it will be just fine to keep things the way they are until you get married next year. Anything else is just going to result in the two of you being miserable, and that is the last thing any of us want."

Kim got up from her chair and sat down beside her father, hugging him again. "Thanks, Daddy. It's just…we're decided that you really were right. It's time we went out and found something." She pointed at the computer, just moments before the screensaver popped up. "Yesterday we looked at a few places. It was starting to look like we were either going to have to settle for something tiny and drab, or we were going to have to board Rufus somewhere."

"That first place we looked was kind of nasty." Ron said, leaning back down on the back of his seat.

"I've been looking at some listings online, though. We still have to do some first-hand looking, but it looks like there should be plenty out there we can afford."

"But Kimmie-cub…"

"Daddy, it's something we want…something we need. It doesn't mean we don't love you and Mom…and the Tweebs. It's just time we finally left the nest. Look at all of our friends, both the ones we grew up with and even the ones we've made at school. Ron and I are the only ones left who haven't moved on already, and it's not like we're moving away like Monique and Felix did. The place Ron is having built is only five minutes away. Then too, we've got friends and sometimes it's really awk-weird for them to come see us here, living like we're still high school kids."

"And we'd really like a queen size or bigger bed." Ron added.

"Ron!" Kim glared at him, blushing slightly again.

"I can always go buy a bigger bed. Kim, is this really what you want? I don't want to lose my Kimmie-cub."

She hugged him again. "You're never losing me. That's final. But it is fair, to us, to you and Mom, even to Jim and Tim. Plus, with Joss coming here in a couple weeks, well, you know how she kinda feels about Ron."

James grimaced slightly. "Honestly, I don't know if you two living together, here or in another place, is going to send the right kind of message to her. Slim is sending her here to grow up a little. Making the best of the situation, I would want her to see how committed the two of you are. I want her to see how important it is for two people to love each other. I really don't think she's actually been 'in love' with her so-called boyfriends."

They all turned when they heard footsteps at the open hatch. Kim's mother came into the room and sat down with her husband.

"Are we all getting past the little incident here yesterday morning?" She asked, looking at each of them in turn.

"We were just talking about that honey. Kimmie-cub and Ronald have decided they are going to look for an apartment."

Anne looked angry for a moment. "I thought we agreed that would not be necessary." She went rigid, moving away from James ever so slightly.

"Mom, it's okay. Daddy said it was okay for us to stay here like we are, but Ron and I decided ourselves that maybe this is the best thing." She leaned over so she could see both her parents. "It's not like it's going to be overnight. We have to find a place first, then we're going to have to worry about furniture, if the place isn't furnished, and then there's moving all of our stuff."

Kim stopped, realizing there was a tear running down her mother's cheek. As much as Anne Possible had been trying to maneuver the two of them together, as much as she had been behind virtually every step of their relationship, Kim realized that she might be experiencing just the same emotions as her father at the prospect of them moving on.

James put a hand on both Kim's leg and Anne's. Listen, maybe right now isn't the time to make any kind of rash decisions. He looked straight at Ron. "The two of you wanted this to be a good last summer for you without having to worry about jobs or school. It's only June and your classes won't start again until the very end of August. I don't see any reason that you should run right out of here.

"Since we're all here, why don't we get a little dressed up and I'll take everyone out to dinner. I think I heard somewhere a certain young lady has a thing for steak."

That got their attention. If there was any particular way to Ron's heart, it was certainly through his stomach. Kim was visibly licking her chops as well. James had no way of knowing that was precisely what she had for dinner the night before, but there were always other choices. She had a filet, but there were strips, and porterhouses, and ribs. None of the Possibles (or Stoppables for that matter) were in any danger of becoming vegetarians any time soon.

"Oh, and Rufus can come too. I'm sure we'll have to get a whole other order of flowered onion for him, but he's family too, you know…uh, I haven't seen him since I got home."

Ron grinned. "Oh, I'm sure he's downstairs. You know him, he can't get out of the room fast enough when…we…" He dragged to a halt when Kim's eyes got as big as dinner plates, shooting daggers at him.

James blushed himself, suddenly realizing that the bed was not as neatly made as it had been that morning. Anne couldn't stand an unmade bed and often got to it long before the kids did. There were even times when they had gotten up early to go to the bathroom and come back into their room to discover it crisply made, forcing them to stay up at that point, even if they had meant to sleep in. Kim could make her bed and often did, but there were subtle differences. If they had been home since just before lunch time and the bed had to be remade…

Anne just rolled her eyes and shook her head. They were young like that once. Heck, they were only in their forties, they weren't_ that_ old.

* * *

Dinner went fairly well, at least for the most part. The kids really were bent on moving out, though it had pretty much been decided it certainly wouldn't be in the next few weeks. There was still the family vacation to think of, as well as their own private getaway. They wouldn't be gone for three weeks like they had been the summer before, especially considering how much of Ron's income was going to be gobbled up by their prospective new home, but he certainly wasn't going to begrudge them that.

They dropped them off at the movies on their way home. The old cinema near the mall had gone downhill somewhat since it converted to second-run features, but it was easy walking distance for them. James didn't like the thought of his daughter walking home in the dark, even if she was a trained martial artist and capable of taking down international super villains, but she had Ron and Rufus with her, as well as being tied into one of the most reliable communications systems on the planet. Anybody that would take them on was either really stupid or didn't know any better.

"I feel like such a heel." He sat down on the loveseat facing the smaller fireplace in their room.

"Why's that?" Anne asked from inside their private bathroom.

"If I hadn't opened my big mouth the kids wouldn't even be thinking about moving out. All because of my stupid old fashioned ideas."

"Being old fashioned is not stupid, James. Remember when that young actress stayed with us for a while a few years ago? That's what you get when you don't live by any recognizable moral code."

"Oh, she wasn't so bad, at least for show folk."

Anne popped her head out the door, her hair wrapped in a towel. "You didn't hear her yapping on that cell phone of hers constantly, then. I was shocked to learn that girl was actually married, yet she still carried on with that fellow who was staying with the Stoppables."

"Really, I didn't notice."

She ducked back inside and ran the hair dryer for a few minutes. When she came back out she sat down beside him on the small couch. It took him a few moments to realize what she had on. It was sheer, on the verge of being completely transparent and he was reminded again that his wife actually didn't look a day over thirty.

"See, you take a while to notice things. Kimmie isn't anything like those people. Sure, she likes being with Ronald, but that's out of love and commitment. They had those things before they started expressing it in other ways. Those kind of people, they just do what feels good." She leaned over to him, draping one leg over his, kissing his neck.

"Speaking of what feels good." He said as her hands started exploring.

"That's what it feels like when it's done out of love. They've given their hearts and their bodies to each other. The only thing they lack is a piece of paper saying it's official. Now I know you and your side of the family think that little legal stamp is what's required to make it moral, but we didn't wait." She wasn't waiting that evening either. If that particular couch could tell stories…

Much later, they both started awake as they heard the doorway to Kim's room open and close, followed by the faint sound of her hatch closing. James stared at the ceiling for a bit, but their room wasn't located directly above theirs so if anything was actually going on, he wasn't likely to hear it.

Anne followed his eyes for a moment, then nestled back down against his body. "Think it's time to move things to the bed? I do have to be at the Medical Center in the morning."

"I suppose so, though I'm not exactly ready for sleep."

"Mmm. Didn't say anything about sleep myself. You sure you're up to round two, old man?"

"Only if you are. Hey, I just had a thought. When was the last time we got away, just the two of us?"

She walked her fingers up his chin. "I thought that's what those 'spousal encounters' were supposed to be about."

"I'm not talking about that sort of thing, where we talk to a counselor half the day and are supposed to run off to a cabin to be together. I mean just the two of us, with nothing better to do than be just like this, without worrying about who else is in the house. There's that bed and breakfast, just north of Upperton. That would be nice and we wouldn't have to spend half the day in the car."

"I love it. So what brought that on?"

He looked up at the ceiling again. "Oh, something Kimmie and I were talking about."

* * *

Kim Possible and all related characters © Disney 


	7. Part VII

**_Where You Hang Your Hat: _Part VII**

* * *

"Um…okay." Ron was sitting beside Kim on the long main couch in the family room. The place was oddly quiet, considering the couple had been left alone in the house hours earlier when James and Anne left for their weekend Bed & Breakfast getaway. By oddly quiet, that meant things were not happening as he expected they would when the older couple announced their plans the day before. Even the weather seemed to cooperate with him, the skies turning dark and dreary, with scattered light rain, with more threatening. It was perfect weather for staying indoors and enjoying indoor activities…activities that were more enjoyable in complete privacy.

Kim flipped through the overly glossy, perfume scented pages of her woman's magazine. Ron never quite got what she saw in the things. She may have been a fairly petite woman, but the models who graced those pages were even thinner still. Then there was the fashions they were supposed to be representing. Kim liked to dress nicely, but she remained very practical in her choice of clothing, as well as being somewhat conservative. He couldn't conceive of her wearing the vast majority of what was displayed in those things.

"What's that, Ronnie." She held a finger on her page and let if flap closed, looking at him with a sort of half smile.

Figuring actions spoke louder than words, he leaned over toward her, putting his hand on the back of her head, pulling her in for a kiss. Before their lips could meet, however, a slender finger came to rest on his. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves."

"Aw, come on, KP. It's getting nastier outside by the moment, there isn't anything on TV and we've got the whole house to ourselves."

Still smiling, she opened the magazine back up on her lap. The words 'time and place' almost sprung to her lips, but she let them die there. She had a long talk with her mother the day before and was under no illusions why her parents had abandoned the house to them for the weekend and did plan on taking full advantage of it herself, but the last thing she wanted to do was spend every waking moment doing what her fiancé was thinking about doing. They may have been twenty, full of youthful vigor, but if they got too carried away too fast, they would end up spending most of their time sleeping. Well, being a male, he would.

"Maybe we should go to the mall." She winced, knowing that was not exactly his favorite pass-time. As much as they liked to do things together, they usually parted company there. She would shop, trying on clothes, sampling make up and fragrances, while he would pretty much camp out at Victoria's Circuits, staring at GWA matches or playing with the latest computer gadgets, even though Wade could reproduce every single one of them for a fraction of the cost.

A kiss wouldn't hurt, though. She wanted what he wanted just as much, but she wanted something more. She wanted some romance to go along with it. His hand was still on her neck, so she let him draw her in, their lips meeting. There was one thing she had discovered, way back when their relationship had been transformed from life-long best friends into so much more. Ron knew how to kiss. It was a natural talent of his, considering she was his first. From that moment on the dance floor of their Junior Prom, it was something she craved. Before him, there had only been that utter disaster with Walter and a quick, almost chaste peck from Josh. Kissing was not something she did lightly, though with Ron she could do it all day.

Her resolve almost wavered. She found herself leaning back, his body melting against hers. There was power in that kiss, the kind that lit a fire in her. That fire had been there from the first moment their lips had met, though for several months she buried its flame in her subconscious, not willing to believe it was true or even possible. That fire had almost consumed her when she finally gave into it. It was surprising how, even with the love they felt for each other that there was so much physical desire right along with it. She loved him and she wanted him. It filled her with joy that she could experience lust without guilt, knowing that the feelings were right and true, and that they were returned in equal measure.

Her eyes closed, she leaned back, giving in to their mutual desires. Instead, Ron broke the kiss, sitting back once more. "Okay, so, let's go shopping. What are you looking for?"

Kim opened her eyes and blinked. "Uh…what?"

"You said you wanted to go shopping. What kinda stuff do you want?"

Taken momentarily aback, Kim just stared at him. Moments before she had been expecting to either be carried upstairs or at the very least be well on her way to spending some quality time there in the family room. Normally, it was one of her father's rules that 'bedroom' activities stayed in the bedroom, but her mother had whispered that while they were away, the reasons for those rules didn't really apply. In the past they had spent many hours making out on that very couch and some nice, dirty thoughts were crossing her mind.

"Uh, Ron, that's not exactly the point to shopping. You should know that by now."

"Well, you go to the store 'cause you want something, you go in, check it out and buy it."

Kim shook her head. He was prone to flashes of brilliance at times, but most of the time he could be so infuriatingly clueless. Maybe that was why she was fine with turning him loose in an electronics store, even if the communications device built into his watch had more functionality than most of the gadgets on display in there. "No, that's going out to Smarty Mart and picking up something. Shopping's different. You go and look at things you didn't know even existed." She leaned a little closer to him. "We can also go into _Alexandria's Confession_ and maybe find something I can wear…like tonight."

That got his attention. Of course, she could have his attention with any one given bit of her lingerie, including the plain, everyday stuff. His male mind was easy to please most of the time. In the past, the naught negligee store was one place he would stop at the entrance of. It was the place she would go into with her girlfriends, emerging later with knowing smiles with little treats that could be unveiled at a later time. The night of their Senior Prom she modeled a silk nightie from there that he still liked, and that had been extremely tame compared to some of the other things available there.

Then she finally forced him to go in with her, ostensibly for him to pick out something for one of their weekend getaways. His eyes nearly popped out of his head. There was stuff there that not only left little to the imagination, it left absolutely nothing. To her pleasant surprise she learned he didn't really like that sort of thing. If he wanted naked, he could have naked. For him, the purpose of such attire was to hint, to tease, to build upon what his fertile mind could dream about. That was all fine with her. The 'fancy' stuff was a bit on the scratchy side anyway.

He leaned back and crossed his arms. "Okay, if that's so, how come we end up spending more money when we go 'shopping' than when we're actually after something."

She just grinned and looked at him through hooded eyes. "Why, that's a woman's prerogative."

"Okay, but there's one condition."

"Oh? What's that? We stop and fill up on Nacos first?"

"No. Well, yeah, that goes without saying. Gotta have some badical snackage to give us energy while you drag me all over the mall. What I was getting at, instead of the Middleton Mall, why don't we go someplace different?"

Kim wrinkled her nose. "Ron, the Upperton Galleria is so snooty. Plus they jack their prices to pay for the higher rent there."

"Nah. I don't like that place too much myself. I was thinking about Lowerton Mills."

If her nose was turned up before, it almost sucked back into her face. "That's…an outlet mall."

Ron raised an eyebrow. "Same stuff, lower price."

"Yeah, but people burn more gas getting down there than they save, and it's so…outletty."

"Pretty sure that's not a word, KP, but that place stadium rocks, and it's bigger than Middleton Mall and the Galleria combined. Hey, it's that or we could take the flyer to the Mall of America."

That really got her to shaking her head. "No, when we went there last year you got lost for two hours, and then I almost had to have Wade track you when I heard you getting sick on one of the rides. Ron, come on, Middleton Mall is fine, and we don't have to spend forty five minutes in the car both ways." She walked her fingers up his leg. "Besides, if I do find something…special to wear, I wouldn't want to waste a bunch of time getting back here so I can try it on." She scooted right up to him, kissing his neck, her fingers walking a little higher.

He craned his head back slightly. "Keep that up and we'll never even get there."

"I thought that's what you wanted." She draped one leg over his, nibbling on his neck.

"Now you've got me interested in some bon-diggity think made of silk, hanging in all the right places." His hand drifted to one of those places, making her purr slightly.

"So, lover boy, what's it gonna be? We brave the rain and go get me something that only you get to see me in, or we run right upstairs and I put on something that only you get to see me in?"

He put his finger to his chin. "Let me see. We can go outside, where it's looking like it's about to rain cats and dogs, find a parking place…hope I can stand up straight when I get out of the car." He fidgeted as her teeth raked his neck a little harder. "or we can stay in and pretend we're staying in our own version of a bed and breakfast."

Kim slid off of him and looked him straight in the eye. "What did you say?"

"Huh? Something wrong?"

"No, no, no. What you said about us pretending we're at a place like Mom and Dad went."

"Oh! Yeah, I was just thinking how badical it would be for us to go to a place like that. No cell phones, no computers, no Kimmunicators. Just the two of us in our own private little room. Only difference is here I've got to be the one who does the cooking at breakfast and Rufus is around somewhere."

She put a hand on his inner thigh, nuzzling his shoulder. "You know, I love you so much. That's the perfect idea, and we don't have to drive anywhere or sleep in a strange bed."

Ron reached over to the coffee table and picked up the brochure Kim's parents had been looking at. "Really, the only thing they're getting we won't is a really big tub." He pointed out the photograph of the bathroom, with its large claw-foot tub.

"You've got this thing for 'good clean fun' don't you, Ronnie?"

"Yeah. Showers are nice, but sometimes I'd like to just sit in some hot water with you until it gets too cool, then run some more hot water and start all over. We could light a bunch of candles, you know, romantical stuff and all."

"Want to know a secret?" She got up on her knees, one hand on his shoulder, the other on his chest.

"O…kay."

"Now, Mom made me promise not to breath a word of this, and it's not to ever happen again without her permission, but you know the one room in this house you've never seen?"

He gave her a funny look. "What? You're Dad's office upstairs? KP, that's…freaky."

"No, silly…you've never seen Daddy's office?"

"Not that I can think of. Kinda funny, it's right down the hall from our room and up a few steps, but I've never seen any more than you can from down there."

"Huh. Anyway…come on, let me show you." She took his hand and led him up the stairs, but instead of taking him up the black staircase, she led him down the hall to a room he had actually seen on several occasions, but had only rarely been in. That was another one of James Possible's rules he had to live by. The master bedroom was strictly off-limits unless they were invited. He had to wonder for a second if that had changed, or they had been given special permission.

The bed itself was massive and comfortable looking, but he couldn't bring himself to imagine them using it. Living in the home, one during the summer when they were about to turn eighteen, and for the last several months, he was pretty much aware that Kim's parents, while in their mid forties, were most definitely not old people and were quite affectionate, seemingly even more so as they became comfortable with him around and especially with the twins away. That was why he just couldn't see them…in that same bed.

The bedroom itself, while partially what he was modeling the one in their future home after, wasn't their destination. He realized then there was one particular room he had never even had a glimpse of. Kim opened the louvered pocket doors, revealing the tiled wonder beyond.

Kim's bathroom was nice. Before the addition had been built, she shared it with the whole family. As she got older, her brothers had migrated to the one downstairs, particularly not wanting to share with a teenaged sister. Then, when Kim was fourteen, the new bathroom was added onto the house, along with the room he once lived in right under it.

Where her bathroom was a pedestrian product of the era the home had been built in, the new private one was a marvel of comfort and modern sophistication. There were twin sinks, a separate water closet complete with bidet, a large shower stall and a very frilly dressing table with a lighted vanity mirror, but the centerpiece of the whole room was a faux marble semi-sunken bath tub that bordered on hot tub. It was easily four times larger than Kim's, with more than enough room for each of them to submerge up to their shoulders. There was a series of water jets in strategic locations, as well as a wand attached to a hose.

"It's not exactly that old fashioned tub you had your heart set on…"

His eyes were still bulging out of his head. "No, but this is like the bathroom of our dreams! I half expect to walk up to the big mirror and have it start acting like a view screen. It's like they took all the best parts of the master stateroom on that ship and put it in here."

"I thought you'd like it. Mom said we could use it while they're away." She sat down on the edge. "Lots of places for candles, if we're got any left from last weekend. What you think?"

He started jokingly pulling on his sneaker. "I think we're very dirty and need to get clean right away."

She got up and led him back out past the bedroom, into the hall. "I think it's only been three hours since we had a shower. Later on tonight, baby."

"I am so going to have a bathroom like that put in our house. Man, if there's anything we could do with our money…"

"Hey, don't be spending it all before we even get it." She gently pushed him against the wall, holding both his hands, leaning her body up against his. "Still think we're missing something at a bed and breakfast?" She rubbed the tip of her nose against his.

"You know, we still have to go out."

"What for?" She mock pouted. "I thought we could stay in and get a little dirty."

He smiled, enjoying the feeling of her against him like that. "Well, if you want the total bed and breakfast experience, we need to go to that gourmet grocery and get a few things, and while we're out that way, we can always hit the mall. You know, pick up some nice candles at _Rebel Candle Company_. Get you something nice at _Alexandria's_."

"But that won't be shopping. That'll be going in to pick up some things." She cooed, dragging a fingernail lightly across his chest.

He laughed out loud. "Yes it will be. I haven't ever seen you set foot in a mall that you didn't shop. We'll be shopping and picking up some stuff."

She stood up straight, still holding his hands. "I win."

"You win?"

"Yep. I wanted to go to the mall and do some shopping, and that's what we're going to do. Let me get my purse."

Ron almost slapped his forehead as she sprinted up the stairs to their room. Then he glanced back into the master bedroom, thinking about the massive tub in there.

_Win-win situation there, Stoppable. Boo-yah!_

* * *

Kim Possible and all related characters © Disney 


	8. Part VIII

**_Where You Hang Your Hat: _Part VIII**

* * *

They had probably driven past the place a thousand times on their way to and from the campus. It certainly didn't look much like an apartment building. Instead it looked like what it actually had been once; a mill of some sort. The serious looking asphalt parking lot and minimal decorative vegetation made them think it was actually converted for business use. The rather prosaic name of Middleton Mills didn't help all that much either.

The stumbled across it while looking through some listings online. With a little research they learned the name was actually historically applied to the building, which was a red brick edifice with towering white trimmed, multi-paned windows. Despite being slightly more than one hundred years old the building did have a crisp, new look to it, having recently undergone an expensive conversion from dilapidated warehouse space to new studio apartments.

Kim pulled the printout from her cargo pocket. "This can't be right. They want how much for a space here? This close to campus?" The housing market was proving to be a bit tighter than they expected, even around the school where apartments sprang up like kudzu in the South. Up until they got to the converted mill building, they were slowly becoming resigned to either living in a tiny, closet sized apartment with absolutely no furnishings, or they were going to have to live across town.

Both remained adamant in their resolve to move out by the time school started. The 'gift' of having the house to themselves for that weekend back in June, then a ten day private vacation pretty much drove home the fact they were much more comfortable away from Kim's parents. No matter how much they loved them, they knew it would never be quite right living under the same roof under their current circumstances. The week-long family vacation they went on after that hammered the point home even more. Being in a hotel room right next to them, hearing what they did during the night…they almost had to head away again just to have some time that really felt 'private' after that.

"What's not right?" Ron looked up at the second floor windows. The ceilings looked extremely high, reminding them of one of the first places they looked at.

"The asking price for this place. It's like three quarters of what those small little places around the campus want, but we're still just about as far from school as we were from High School." Both of them were in good enough shape to walk that kind of distance, though their senior year they got spoiled by having Ron's battered old hatchback to ride in. For a strange, little moment she missed that car, remembering only the good about the only vehicle they had between them for a while.

"I dunno, KP. You turned your nose up at that other studio apartment we looked at a while back."

"That place cost twice as much as this one and it was a lot further from campus. I don't know about you, honey, but I'd just as soon put up with living with either of our folks for another year if we're still going to have to drive all the way across town anyhow. If this is nice…let me put it this way, we're perfectly welcome in two homes, so if we do the family thing, it can always be in one of those, so an apartment could be our own little private place, just for us, then when our townhouse is ready, that's when we can play host and all that."

"It's your call."

Kim took his hand. "Don't ever talk like that. It's both our calls, every time. We're equal partners in everything."

He smiled softly at her. "I'll remember that the next time we're on a mission and you're calling all the shots."

She gave his hand a good squeeze, a little firmer than would be considered gentle. "Not cool, Ron. We tried it the other way a couple times and, well, we've each got our strengths and we've each got our weaknesses, or would you like me to try my hand at hollandaise sauce again?"

He shuddered, letting go of her hand. "So much butter wasted." He shook his head sadly.

The office was a brick structure that had once been some sort of out-building in the mill complex. Some of the walls had been knocked down and replaced with replicas of the tall windows, making it look like a miniature of the main buildings. Kim still couldn't shake that the place felt much more like an office park than a place where people actually lived.

It was actually cold inside, or it felt that way compared to the July heat outside. They were experiencing one of the hottest summers in memory. The icy sensation was heightened by the fact they had already broken out in a sweat walking the distance from their car to the manager's suite.

The interior was not quite as converted as they expected. The ceiling was still open framework, though the metal braces had been painted white, which, along with the light streaming in from the large windows, made the interior quite nice. The mixture of the new and the old was actually quite pleasant.

Nobody was at the single wooden desk in the lobby. There was a window much like one would find in a high-security bank branch nearby, most likely where some of the poorer tenants would come to pay. The complex was classified as public housing, so it was clear some would probably be paying in cash. To keep thing simple, they had already made arrangements with Ron's father to pay for the entire year in advance out of Ron's trust, freeing them from worrying about the rent. Even at what they were asking for the space, if it weren't furnished, they were going to be spending quite a bit on furniture and appliances.

"Hello?" Ron looked for an old-fashioned bell on the desk, then peeked inside the window.

"Maybe we should have called first." Kim suggested, still looking around at the interior.

"Can I help you?" A small man with a neatly trimmed mustache walked around the corner, grinning at the young couple. He was dressed in what might be considered the standard uniform of a used car salesman. He went right up to Ron, smoothly shaking his hand, while offering a flat box with the other. "Doughnut?"

Ron automatically reached for one of the sprinkle encrusted treats, stopping when Kim glared at him. They had already had a large breakfast and she was starting to get on her high horse about what he ate again.

"My name's Wallace Gruber. I'm the manager of Middleton Mills. Do I take it the two of you are looking for an apartment? We have several lovely units available for immediate lease."

Kim took her turn shaking the man's hand. "Hey, don't I know you from somewhere?"

He smiled right back at her. "Oh, I am sure I would remember somebody as lovely as you. Please, let's go look at the model."

She was ready for that. They had already seen a dozen places and the first thing the manager wanted to show them was the model. Then when it came to the actual unit, the only thing that looked the same was some fresh paint. "Actually, I would just as soon see the units themselves, if you don't mind."

"Ah, a discriminating customer. Of course, if you two would follow me." He led them out a back door, selecting a couple sets of keys on his way. The first unit he took them to was on the first floor. In order to achieve the high-ceilings, it was built halfway underground, causing all the windows to be set somewhat higher in the walls. They lasted about five minutes in there before both of them were turning up their noses at the prospect.

The next one he took them to was on the second floor. Just as they feared, it was mostly unfurnished, save for a small built in oven/range and a decent sized refrigerator. The rest of the space looked much like the studio apartment they looked at before. The walls were partially raw brick, partially clean white sheetrock, with the tang of fresh paint still hanging in the air. It was partitioned off, rather than having completely separate rooms, though the bedroom itself was set back from the large windows along one wall, affording them proper privacy.

Ron was enthralled by the small kitchen. There was just enough space for him to do his magic, and the appliances met with his approval. "Oooo, shiny." He commented, running his hands on the brushed stainless steel doors.

"It's awfully open." Kim said pacing the length of the main space.

"I'm sure once your furniture arrives it will look much nicer." Gruber said, stepping off a space where a couch could sit. There was even a free-standing fireplace, as well as a large, open wall where an entertainment center could be set up.

Ron looked Kim in the eyes. She could tell he was already sold on it, though she was still concerned about having virtually the whole home open to the one large room. The bathroom wasn't much different than what they were used to in her house, but it did have the double sink they were looking for.

Biting her lower lip, she considered it. The price was right, they were willing to lease the place for one year and it did not matter they were still three and four weeks away from turning twenty-one.

"Excuse us." She led Ron out into the hallway and closed the door.

Taking both his hands, she asked. "What do you think?"

"This place is badical! I know it's really open for your tastes, but it's only for a year. It's nicer than anything else we've seen this close to school, and think about it, we could move some furniture around and have enough room to do our workouts. It'd be far better than the garage at home."

"Okay, baby. You said it's my call, but in reality it's not. It's your money we're going to be spending."

"KP, there's no such thing as just my money. You were sitting right with me when I invented the Naco, so you'd be entitled to it even if we weren't together."

"Ronnie, that's sweet, but it's still legally your money."

"I don't care for legal, you know that. Listen, KP, if you don't like the place…"

She put a finger on his lips. "I like it a lot, because I see how much you like it. I say yes."

"You really think so?"

"Yes. They take small pets. The only thing we don't have is that big tub we had our hearts set on, but you've already got the architect putting one in at our townhouse."

"Yeah. Actually, that was already his plan anyway. That's just the way they build them for a home that size. Okay, let's do it."

* * *

It took about a week to wrap everything up, and even then it took most of the day for them to get their meager belongings moved into the space. The worst of it was their furniture. With the money they saved on the space they put in an order for a nice bedroom suite, but it was going to take a few days longer for it to be delivered from the plant in North Carolina, so their first night in their new home was going to be spent sleeping on a futon they picked up at a local furniture store. When their new furnishings arrived, it would be converted into a sofa, but for the moment, it was their bed.

Ron fixed them a candlelight dinner, complete with a bottle of wine his father had given them as a housewarming gift. The 'table' was actually one of the larger moving boxes and the 'chairs' were borrowed from Ron's house until their own furniture could come, but he made the best of it, using a white bed sheet folded in half as a table cloth and using some brand new china he picked up along with their first decent load of groceries. The wine glasses were plastic.

"To our first night together in our new home." Kim said, holding up her 'glass.'

Ron responded in kind, but the click was completely obliterated by the sound of a low flying propeller driven airplane passing directly overhead. The could see the landing lights as it dropped beyond the tree-line.

"Oh no." Kim moaned, setting her wind down and burying her face in her hands.

Ron jumped up, running toward the window. "Was it going down?" he was clearly frantic, worried about the passengers on the small plane.

She looked up at him frowning. "They're okay. I was saying 'oh no' because I just remembered something. There's a small airport about a half mile away from here. I've used it a couple times when I hitched rides for a mission."

Ron pursed his lips. "Well, it can't be too bad. We've been here half the day and that's the first plane that's gone over."

She closed her eyes for a second, collecting her thoughts. "I guess you're right. It's not like we're out by the big airport, with jets flying over every five minutes." She actually smiled. "Maybe this will be a good thing. Beats having Hoverjets landing in the parking lot every time they're ready to pick us up." She took a sip of her wine and dug into his latest creation. "Mmm, this is spankin! What is it?"

"Well, I pretty much followed a standard recipe for Duck A L'Orange…"

"Duck?" She asked, dubiously, staring at her plate as if it had just turned into something she had cooked.

"I know, I know, you don't like the thought of eating duck. It's actually better grade chicken, with the same sauce."

"Whew." She took another bite. Something was tickling the back of her mind, diverting her attention from their delicious fare. "Ron, you remember that guy who showed us this place the first day?"

"Yeah. Real slick dude there. Really don't think I could trust him as far as I could throw him."

"Heh. That little guy, I think you could throw him pretty far. No, well, yeah, he did seem a little slimy, but I could swear we've seen him somewhere before. What did he say his name was?"

"Wallace something. I can dig up the copy of our lease, it'll be on there."

"No, that's fine. Sit down and finish your dinner." She grinned across the 'table' as he did so. She had a certain 'christening' ceremony for their new digs later that night, one that involved the shiny black silk nightie Ron bought her that weekend her parents went away. The cable company would not be out until the next day and they hadn't yet put their entertainment center together, so their amusements that evening would be with each other, and she wouldn't have it any other way. Ron had all of the coming year to crash in front of their television. She wanted him all that night.

She opened her mouth to coo sweet nothings at him, but instead of her own voice, a piercing wail thundered through the apartment, followed by a crashing and thumping sound. At first she thought something terrible was going on, but quickly realized is was music, coming presumably from the apartment next door.

"Oh boy." Ron put his fork down, staring at the wall. Or at least that's what she though he said. She couldn't hear it over the driving beat. She wasn't even sure if the music was recorded, or somebody was practicing with a garage band, with all the amplifiers turned to eleven.

Most songs go from three to five minutes. It'll be over soon, she told herself as they finished their dinner without speaking. There really was no point to trying. They would have to shout just about everything to be heard. The worst part was that Kim knew the law. There wasn't a thing they could do about the pounding, poor quality music until eleven that night, and it wasn't quite nine.

It must be somebody trying to sing, she finally decided, glaring at the wall with enough intensity that the offending crooner should have been able to feel it right through the opaque, but surprisingly thin wall.

Wiping her lips, she got up. She had to cup her hands to shout at Ron. "I'm going to take a bath!"

"You're going to sail a raft?" He repeated back in confusion.

Kim rolled her eyes and pantomimed scrubbing her sides. He nodded his understanding and set about cleaning up their dinner.

At least there was a little relief from the wailing and pounding, since the bathroom was on the opposite side of the apartment. She closed the door, cutting out all but the pounding bass beat that actually made the windows vibrate. She was most def going to have to talk to her neighbors the next day. Maybe it was just a party. It was Friday night, after all. Something like that once in a while was fine, though if it went on too long it was going to spoil part of her plans that evening. She was going to use their two hand-held Kimmunicators to play soft, romantic music, and light some candles around their temporary bed. Then they would set about making their new place a home, just for the two of them.

She stripped out of the light summer dress she had worn for their dinner and started the water. Of course, it would have been fun to take her shower with Ron, but she wanted to be extra clean for him, and to make her grand appearance dressed in nothing but that clingy bit of silk. Sure, he had seen her in it several times, but just like her older purple one, he never got tired of seeing her in it, or out of it for that matter. The true test of that kind of nightwear was how short a time it was actually worn, though technically it didn't have to come all the way off.

Putting her hand under the water she frowned. The hot was all the way up, but it was still luke-warm. Maybe Ron was busy doing the dishes, pulling some of the hot water away. Normally she liked it almost scalding, even in the heat of high summer, but it was enough to get by with.

Halfway through the bath, the water changed from lukewarm to room temperature. Growling slightly, she rinsed the last of the suds off and got out. A cold shower was definitely not what she wanted that evening. At least she was able to get clean. She made a mental note to make her sweetie wait until after she was done to do dishes in the future.

Kim toweled her hair dry as much as she could, then got out her hairdryer. Year of being a 'towel off' kind of girl had gone out the window when she decided to let her hair grow out. That worked fine when it came to a point between her shoulder blades, but now that it was down around the small of her back, it took forever to air dry. Plugging it into the outlet, she started gently drying it, brushing it as she went…

…until everything went black.

It took a few moments for her eyes to adjust. The circuit breakers had popped off and she wasn't even using the dryer on its high setting. Growling anew, she fumbled for a towel and wrapped it around her.

There was enough light coming from outside to see the stacked boxes in the apartment, at least vaguely. "Ron? Where are you?"

"I'm looking for the fuse box."

She mentally cursed herself for not thinking to ask where it was. Working up a good snit, she started back toward the bathroom, brushing up against the box they had just used for dinner. That was just enough to make her lightly wrapped towel drop to the floor.

"Got it!" Ron proclaimed happily, as the lights popped back on.

Kim blinked once, then twice. She was standing in the middle of the room, right in front of all the large windows, windows they had not yet put any kind of treatments on. There were enough lights on in the flat so that every bit of her body was fully illuminated, for all the world to see through those crystal clear portals.

Turning as red as the bricks the building was made of, she grabbed the towel from the floor and hastily made it back into the bathroom. This was so not turning out like she thought their first night in their own place was going to.

Trying to make the best of it, she stood in the bathroom door as Ron sat down on the futon, taking off his shoes. The pounding music was still going on, though the singer, who obviously didn't have the talent to even be mocked on _American Starmaker_, had stopped for the moment. Kim stretched out a leg seductively. "Why don't you put on my favorite suit?"

"What's that, KP? The silk jammies?"

"I was thinking more along the lines of the one you got on your birthday." She grinned, grinding her body lightly against the door jamb.

He confused for a moment. The year before she had gotten him a new video game platform, the one that finally replaced the venerable GameCylinder. Then he put two and two together. "Oh, Birthday suit! Sure thing KP."

"Smiling she ducked back into the bathroom and finished brushing out her hair, leaving it just slightly damp, lest she trip the breakers again. Then she spritzed her body with some of her favorite lavender spray, knowing the smell of her freshly cleaned body combined with it would drive Ron utterly wild. Wild was how she wanted him that evening.

Finally, she slipped into the black silk. The straps were almost invisible, and the bottom only barely long enough to cover her, with slits up both sides so he could see the shape of her upper thighs. It was one of the raciest things she had ever worn, even tough absolutely nothing was actually visible.

The lights were already off and about half a dozen candles were lit. Somebody was still banging a drum-set and plucking a bass guitar in the other apartment, but it wasn't quite so bad by that point. Slipping under the satin comforter with him, she wrapped one leg around his, kissing his chin, then his neck.

"Welcome home, baby." She breathed as his hands scrunched up the bottom of her nightie.

That's when she heard what sounded like a woman's voice go "Oh!" She didn't think much of it, until it was repeated, then again, and again.

Kim sat up in their bed, realizing that just on the other side of the wall that formed the back of their bedroom, there was another couple, already engaged in their evening activities. Her hands went up to her mouth in horror as she realized just how thin the wall actually was.

Ron looked at her in the candlelight, his own ardor vanishing completely as a light thumping started. They both guessed it was a bed hitting the wall. Shaking his head, he turned on a lamp and proceeded to extinguish the candles.

Kim figured out what he was doing right off the bat. She got up and helped him, pulling the futon away from the wall, all the way to where the funnel fireplace sat. It was way too warm, even with the AC on to use it, but at least they were away from the amorous couple in the other adjacent apartment.

Then, miraculously, the music stopped. Only, they were once again able to hear the very loud sounds of romance coming from the other direction. Then another airplane flew over, apparently missing the building by mere inches, or at least it sounded that way.

Kim crawled under the cover, lying on her stomach and putting one of her pillows over her head. Any thoughts of making love with Ron had gone out the window along with part of her sanity. "This is not happening…this is not happening" She repeated over and over as Ron pounded his forehead on a section of brick wall.

* * *

Kim Possible and all related characters © Disney 


	9. Part IX

**_Where You Hang Your Hat: _Part IX**

* * *

Kim's eyes fluttered open. It was still dark outside, but at least the apartment was finally quiet. The moon was high in the early morning sky, bathing the whole place in its pale silver glow. She slid out from under the comforter they were sleeping under and went to the windows, carefully making sure her short sleepwear was all the way down, just in case there was someone outside. She wondered what time it actually was, but they had yet to unpack any clocks, and her watch was still sitting on the bathroom counter where she had taken it off earlier.

Ron was sleeping soundly on his back. She shook her head and smiled softly, watching him sleep in the moonlight. The comforter was pushed down low on his waist and he had his arms behind his head. He looked so beautiful like that, sleeping pretty much on the floor. She had to admit there was something nice about the futon. It was just soft enough as a cushion, while the hardness of the polished wood floor offered surprisingly comfortable support. In the peace of the very early morning, their new place certainly seemed much nicer than it had earlier. Maybe they could come to like the place. In the morning they could ride over to the home center and pick up some nice blinds and other window treatments, improving their privacy. Something else could be done with the space that was ostensibly supposed to be the bedroom. With some blinds up, she wouldn't feel so self-conscious about the windows and their sleeping space could be put somewhere else, perhaps right where they were. The thought of having their bed out in the open like that was a bit strange, but with some creative furnishing, it would be quite nice. Perhaps they could pick up some screens like she used for dressing in her old room, and the bed nook would be a good place to set up their computer center and a couple desks for doing their school work.

She looked back out the window. There were no other units facing theirs, and the wall was about three feet above the floor, effectively putting their bed below the view of anyone outside. Smiling, she padded back over and slipped under the covers. Ron barely stirred as she pulled them up over her. Scooting up next to him, she threw one arm over his chest and buried her head in the nook between his head and his shoulder. He responded in his sleep by wrapping one arm around her and putting his other hand on her bare arm.

"Mmmm. KP? Is it morning?" His eyes never opened, but he started stroking the soft skin of her upper arm.

"Not yet. Go back to sleep, honey."

He turned partially onto his side, facing her. "Guess I'm awake now." He twisted a bit so he could work the light on his watch. Even though he wasn't wearing anything else, he rarely took his off except to bathe.

"What time is it?"

"A little after four." He let his arms back down, wrapping them partially around her. Even in the dim light she could see his frown. "This isn't what we wanted, is it?" he asked, seeing the same expression mirrored on her normally pretty features.

She tried to smile. "It's gonna be okay. We just have to get used to living with other people." She tried to sound confident. Even though they had moved in only the day before, the lease was signed the day after they first looked at the place, and the short grace period had expired. They were locked into it and would have to make the best of it.

"I'm sorry, KP. I guess we jumped at this too fast. At least we know why the place was so cheap. I was thinking maybe it was rent-controlled since it was designated public housing."

"I looked into that. We don't qualify, so we had to pay the going rate. Guess they were having trouble keeping tenants or something."

"I wonder why." He responded sarcastically. "We even going to bother unpacking?"

Kim rolled flat on her back. "Guess we have to. They've got our money and we're under contract. What else can we do? Tuck our tails between our legs and go running back to Mom and Dad…either set?"

"If it's going to be like this every night? Will we have a choice?"

She snuggled back up to him. "I'm not going to do that. Now that it's quiet, it's not so bad."

Ron pulled her closer, drawing the covers up over them. He was very tender and gentle with her. It wasn't how they planned it to be, but like Kim was saying, they had to make the best of it. Both of them quickly fell into a deep slumber afterwards, curled up in each others arms.

It was well into morning when Kim finally awakened, only it wasn't as bright out as she expected it to be. Rain was pelting the tall windows and she half-expected to have a leak start right on her face. Surprisingly, the place actually wasn't leaking, at least as far as she could see for the moment.

She reached to her right, but found herself alone in the temporary bed. That was when she realized it wasn't only the sound of pouring rain she heard on the metal roof. Ron was already up, taking the shower he missed the night before. She looked around and located her nightie and shrugged into it, still being a little self-conscious of the large windows.

There was steam pouring from the open bathroom door, so at least his shower was hot. "Morning, baby. Want some company in there?"

"Yeah, but you're gonna have to make it quick. The water's nowhere near as hot as when I started, and I haven't been in here that long."

True to his word, she barely had enough time to lather up and rinse before it had gone merely lukewarm. She noted the hairdryer still sitting on the counter and was glad she had not washed her hair again, at least until they could get some better breakers, or at least figure out which lights were on the same circuit.

After getting dressed, they set about unpacking their things. It was getting close to lunch time when they finished, though the place still looked almost completely empty. Wade would be by later on to set up their computer, though until the cable connection was activated (the place was already wired for it) they were going to have to rely on the wireless cards in their communicators to actually hook it up. Ron pointed out that they were indeed quite spoiled by having things like monster water heaters and dedicated T1 lines in her old house. If they wanted long, hot, steamy showers (or any of their 'good clean fun') they were either going to have to go back to her old house or wait a year.

All the while the rain just kept pouring down, doing nothing to help their mood. Kim stood at the window, looking at the gray skies. The storms were rolling down out of the foothills in waves, though it never let completely up between downpours.

Ron came up behind her and put his hands on her upper arms, giving them a light squeeze. "Think we should ride over to your house and borrow the mini-van so we can hit _Builder's Depot_?"

Kim shuddered slightly. To her, the big box home centers were only a small step above discounters like _Smarty Mart_. There used to be lots of little, old-fashioned hardware stores about, but many of them were gone, unable to compete with the huge indoor lumberyards. Still, they were on a budget, and it was wise to buy the generally cheaper stuff they could find there. It was still going to cost hundreds just picking up the things they needed to make the apartment into something resembling a home.

"I'm a little leery of heading home right now." Home. She still called it that. One night did nothing to erase what she still thought of as the one and only place she had ever lived. Ron certainly felt the same way. He barely remembered the condo his parents had lived in before they moved to Middleton when he was a toddler. What made things worse was that the place was really only temporary. A year did seem like a long time, but that would be gone in an instant. At least she could look forward to the place they were having built. Being a townhouse design, it would still butt up against other homes, but it was designed from the get-go as a fully modern, soundproofed domicile, with all the comforts they desired custom built for them.

She had to reconcile herself to the thought that even that would not seem like home for a while. Moving was just something she had never seriously considered when she started sharing her life with Ron. They had gone forward with blinders on, their relationship being the one and only thing they could see. It was such a strange thought that what had been her room for all that time really no longer was hers. Joss had moved in a couple weeks earlier and was already asking if she could move from the guest room into the loft. It was looking more and more like they could never go back.

Ron left her and went back to his current project. He sat down heavily on the puffy blue chair that used to sit in Kim's old room, trying to make heads or tails of the vacuum cleaner they bought a couple days earlier. True, they didn't have any carpets yet, but among the things they wanted to buy were some rugs, so the appliance was a must.

Kim smiled, leaning over his shoulder as he poured over the instructions. It was a canister model rather than an upright like her mother used. Ron actually insisted, after the salesman pointed out the canisters were actually more powerful. Kim thought it was just a line of bull, but the hose attachments would be handy for keeping dust down in all the little nooks and crannies of the place.

"Here, Ron. It goes together like this." She picked it up, shoved the bag into place and snapped it shut. "See, nothing to it. Thought you were the 'domestic goddess' in this relationship."

"Well, if they didn't have to write the instructions in fifteen different languages, and hire a third grader to do the drawings. Hey, how did you know how to do that anyway? I don't remember you even so much as touching your Mom's vacuum."

She shrugged, fiddling with the power attachments. "Just something I remember from our 'Job Fair' fiasco. Guess what Joe had to teach me stuck more than I thought."

"Huh. I thought that vacu-thingie of his was supposed to be a model of Drakken's weather machine, not a real vacuum cleaner."

"Let's just say Joe was really into his cover. He…wait." She looked at the canister sitting on the floor. Ron hadn't connected the hose to it yet, so it did look a lot like the Vacrometer model the Canadian agent tried teaching her with.

"You're not thinking this rain is another weather machine, are you. There were calling for it to be sunny today."

"No. Ron, remember when I said the sales manager looked familiar?"

"Uh, yeah. He kinda looked like a cliché used car salesman, though the only guy I've ever dealt with on a used car lot looked a lot more like Jack Hench than anyone else."

"Not used cars, Ron. Wallace Gruber, that's what he said his name was. Oh, why didn't I see it then!"

"What? Don't tell me you've been looking for a car for me again, cause I've had my eye on an old Trans Am that would look real nice if it was restored."

"No, not used cars. Used Weather Machines."

By that point Ron was really confused. "Why would you want me to buy a weather machine. They got banned after Summer Gale used one to create that snow storm here."

"Gaaaahhh! Ron, Wallace Gruber is Wacky Wally. Wacky Wally's Weather Machines, remember? He was lying when he said he'd never seen us before, he's the one who called us when Drakken stole that weather machine from him."

He perked up a little. "Oh, cool. Glad he found some other work when his lot got shut down. Kinda funny him landing here in Middleton."

"Don't you get it, Ron? They brought him in because he's a real slickster. That's why it took so long for the place to get ready. The law says there's a three day grace period, but it goes from the day we sign the lease, not the day we move in. He stalled us so we'd be trapped in a lease. Grrrrrrrr." She grabbed the instruction booklet and tore it in half before stomping off toward the kitchen. "I've got half a mind to call Daddy's lawyer and see if we can get out of this mess. I'm willing to bet there are rules that apply in this instance. He misrepresented the place! Nobody mentioned there would be a bunch of grunge-rock rejects playing half the night, or a couple banging away like they were shooting a porno movie on the other side. Or that we don't even have enough hot water to take a proper shower, or…"

"Kimbo. Like you said, it's not so bad. Think what it would have been like if we were living in the dorms. They have to deal with all the same stuff, and they don't have a quarter of the space we do."

"Yeah? Well…they don't have a wall that's nothing but floor to ceiling windows, so they're not on display for the world to see? I know I don't like the thought of walking around in our all-together all the time, but there are some times I'd like some privacy."

"KP, did you stop to think, if that couple had waited a few minutes, we would probably be making a lot of the same noises? Maybe even louder?"

"But I don't want to hear them, and I don't want other people hearing us!" She screamed, slamming a bag of bread down on the counter. "I don't want to have to live with our bed out in the middle of what was supposed to be our living room. How long before the tabloids find out I've got my own apartment and they start putting the paparazzi up in the hills with telephoto lens, prying on the two of us doing what we think is private?"

Ron got up, holding his hands out in front of him. "Calm down, Kim. Neither of us got as much sleep as we should last night."

"No? I guess not. But how long is it going to be before one of those planes actually clips the roof here? What are they doing landing there at all hours of the night anyway? Maybe I need to call Wade and run an FAA check on them."

"Whoa, KP, amp down there. For all we know that was just some private pilot types getting in late from joyriding. It was only two planes."

"Two planes, a rock band, mister bangs-a lot, a cold shower when I really didn't want a cold shower and on top of that it's freaking raining again." She sat down on the kitchen stool, hanging her head sadly, spent by her outburst.

Ron wrapped his arms around her shoulders. "KP, remember what we were thinking when we went on that first long trip together, right after we turned eighteen?"

She rested her head on his upper arm, putting her hands on his forearm. "If you're talking about the first time we…"

"Not so much that. We wanted to get out and be normal people for a while. We wanted to live like the rest do, instead of trading in favors to stay in some posh place, or riding in somebody else's private jet. There's other people who live here, and from the looks of things some of them have been here since they opened this place a few years ago. Face it, babe. This is how regular people live."

Kim felt like the tears would start any moment. This wasn't what she had planned for her life. It always seemed things would go on and on just as they had been all her years. She would always have her comfortable little room, in a nice house, surrounded by a family that loved her. Now she was stuck in a place, living with people she had not yet met, people she wasn't sure she wanted to meet. For instance, how was she going to be able to look that one set of neighbors in the eye after last night?

"We shouldn't have unpacked." She said finally, gripping his arm a little tighter.

"Don't think we're going to stay?"

She shook her head sadly and leaned back into him a little more. "I don't know. If we hadn't unpacked maybe I could call a lawyer and we could get out of this lease. I don't want to go running back home, but this is wrong, ferociously wrong."

"You want me to call Dad P? It really won't take us that long to get the stuff boxed back up."

"No…no, I don't know what I want to do. I guess I just had this little fantasy that this was going to be, I dunno, like some little secret love nest for us. That was the whole point, wasn't it? For us to be together without bumping up against our family all the time?"

Ron put his hands on her shoulders and rubbed. "I dunno, that was pretty nice this morning."

"Yeah. But it felt, I dunno, kinda like when we're at your folk's place, being all sneaky quiet about it?"

He walked around in front of her, taking her chin in one hand and kissing her. When their lips parted, her eyes remained closed. "KP, it was more than pretty nice. It was extreme badicalness. I don't care about the quiet, all I care about is being with you, and somehow I don't think we're going to bother those people next door, if you know what I mean. This is our home, and last night we made it that way."

Without another word, Kim hopped up from the stool and went back to their still-unmade futon, grabbing the edge of it and hauling it once more back into the sleeping alcove. Then she went back into the kitchen and wrapped her arms around Ron's waist, kissing him again.

"You know, I'm still not that good about understanding girls, but I think I'm getting some signals here." He said, letting his hands slip down from her waist.

"Ronnie, if I was giving you any louder signals, they'd hear them over at the school." She took his hands and started leading him to the bedroom. Getting out a box of matches, she started lighting the candles once more.

"Let's make some noise." She husked as she pulled him down onto the futon.

* * *

Kim Possible and all related characters © Disney 


	10. Part X

**_Where You Hang Your Hat: _Part X**

* * *

The apartment had changed dramatically over the course of two weeks. All of that massive, open space was gobbled up pretty quickly once they got their furniture and started arranging it. The bed found a new home, away from what they planned to use as their 'den.' They set it up in one corner of the large main room, partitioned off with a number of Asian themed partitions. The windows in that section had a set of dark colored standard Venetian blinds, accented with some light drapes, creating a nice, private section for their 'bedroom.' Each of them had a chest-of-drawers and they shared a wardrobe for their hanging clothes. Out of season clothes were relegated to the closet in what was originally intended as the bedroom, but had become their 'office' space. The futon found its new home as part of their couch, facing a small entertainment center and the fireplace. That would serve as their 'guest' bedroom if any of their friends came to town and wanted to crash there. So far that hadn't happened. Of all their old friends, only Monique had come back briefly, but she ended up staying with her parents in her old room. Of perhaps a week she was back, Kim only got to see her a couple hours. 

Their great 'last summer off' wasn't turning out to be exactly that. Kim found out that she had to make a presentation to the review board at Middleton College for her Senior Project, and that was due in about a week. That meant long hours with her butt planted in the leather swivel chair at her desk, where the main computer was set up. It was nearly complete, with most of the work done in the first few days. Still, despite her physical inactivity, she was tired. Saving her work, she leaned back in the chair and pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to de-fuzz her eyesight. Her vision had tested perfect when she had gone in for her annual physical a week earlier, but that was a fairly cursory exam. Either she was experiencing more strain than she was used to, or she needed to schedule an appointment with a specialist.

She chuckled softly, thinking it would be karma coming to bite her if she ended up wearing corrective lenses. Back during their Sophomore year, Ron had learned his astigmatism was getting worse and he would have to start wearing glasses for reading and driving. She teased him for a while, especially when he had to wear a pair of terrible looking black rimmed spectacles while they waited for his wire rimmed ones to be made. At least she thought it was gentle teasing. Ron was truly upset about the whole thing and accused her of thinking he looked like a nerd with them on. Well, turnabout would be fair play if she had to start wearing them as well. Only, if her eyes were going bad, she was going to wear contacts like her mother did. She was more than a little vain about her appearance and there were no styles out there she would even consider wearing except in private.

Things quieted down considerably after that first night. There wasn't anything they could do about the airplanes, as the runway was pointed directly at their unit, but it was unusual to hear more than four or five planes landing all day. What's more, she knew half the pilots that flew from the private airfield, having accepted rides from them on many occasions.

The 'loving couple' next door turned out to be a Norwegian couple who had only been married about six months. Kim never brought up anything about that first night, but once they realized somebody lived on the other side of that one wall, they apparently made some sort of change and while there were occasional interesting sounds coming from over there, they weren't bothered by it any longer. They even invited the two of them over for dinner, which was an interesting affair. When Ron's plate was served he looked like he was about to crawl out of his skin. She didn't quite understand why. While meat cakes and lamb and cabbage stew weren't anything she would ever ask him to make for dinner, they certainly were edible enough. The couple just wanted to make them something that was enjoyed in their homeland. At least he had the grace to eat a polite portion of his meal and not embarrass her, though when they got back to their apartment he used half a tube of toothpaste and drained a quarter bottle of mouthwash.

It took almost a week before they caught up with the rocker on the other side of them. They were expecting a younger guy, likely even a student just like them. Instead he looked like he was in his mid thirties, with wild reddish hair and a neatly trimmed Vandyke. Before they could even bring it up, he started apologizing profusely for the impromptu concert they were treated to that night. Turned out he had no idea their unit had been rented, and as he had the end apartment, he figured there was a pretty good buffer between him and the Norwegian couple.

A quick call to an electrician who owed them a favor fixed the breaker box problem. Too many things were tied into one breaker, and all it took was a few minutes tracing the wires and reconnecting them to appropriate switches and Kim could dry her hair with confidence.

The only problem they had yet to reach a solution to was the hot water. Surprisingly, each unit had its own hot water supply. The electrician wasn't any help, as it was a gas fired water heater. He was able to tell them it was plenty large for a couple, being roughly half the size of the one they were used to in Kim's old home. That meant a call to the complex maintenance people, but they were tied up with something else for the time being and couldn't get to them for a couple of weeks, since they did have some hot water. They resolved themselves to sharing quick utilitarian showers in the morning, each thinking how nice it would be to have a little fun once it got fixed.

All in all Kim was starting to think their new apartment was actually becoming a home. A couple nights earlier they decided to have a housewarming party redux, substituting a bottle of sparkling apple cider for champagne, partly because Kim still recalled the last time she got a little too much of the bubbly stuff, but mostly because they were still just shy of their twenty-first birthdays and didn't want to put either set of parents in a position of buying it for them. There was still a partial bottle of wine in the fridge, but they wanted something sparkling for the occasion. Ron broiled a pair of steaks in the oven and the evening went off without a hitch, including the later festivities.

Leaning all the way back in the modest chair, she caught sight of Ron sitting in the den area. Well, at least she could see the back of his head sticking up above the couch. From the look of the idle video game screen, he had most likely dozed off. It seemed so unfair for them to be cooped up in the apartment on beautiful July day, but she wanted to put the school work behind her quickly. There was perhaps two or three hours of work left on it, but she knew she was tired. She had been up until midnight the night before working on it and had pretty much rolled out of bed at six that morning, pounding away at it while Ron made them breakfast.

That made her stop and consider herself. She was still wearing the same little purple halter top she had slept in for years, along with a pair of jogging shorts. He hair was a tangled mess and she was certain her body was starting to generate its own aroma that had little to do with the soap and lavender smell that Ron seemed to like so much. Well, it was almost lunch time. She could rouse Ron from his nap to fix them a little something while she popped into the shower. Then maybe they could grab their swimsuits and head to the city pool, or perhaps even drive out to Lake Middleton for a little fun in the sun. After a week's work they deserved a little break.

She thought about some other things, but didn't want to tempt fate once more. The day after they moved in they decided to have a little fun together, of the sort they had planned for the previous night. It went well, to the point they were indeed making quite a bit of noise. Only, what she didn't know was that her parents had decided to stop by and bring a few housewarming gifts of their own.

To hear her mother tell the tale, at the very moment her father's finger touched the doorbell, he did not hear a buzzer or chimes, but a distinctly familiar female voice expressing great joy. He stood there frozen for a moment, thinking that somehow his pressing the button had caused that particular sound.

Anne Possible almost collapsed in laughter once she realized what was happening. They had argued briefly on the way over that they really should have called first, in the event they were away, or as the case truly turned out to be, that they were…indisposed. Thinking fast, she pulled out her cell-phone and called Kim's (the land-line phones weren't hooked up at that point,) telling her they were going to drop by, oh, in about fifteen to twenty minutes. Then she dragged her husband back outside and they drove around the neighborhood for a few minutes while Kim and Ron got dressed. Kim was already quite flushed with embarrassment when her mother pulled her aside to tell her what had actually happened, and got even worse when it was pointed out that Ron had his t-shirt on inside out and her blouse was mis-buttoned. Both of them decided later that, even though it was their own home and their own free-time, well, Kim's tried and true axiom of 'time and place' still applied.

Not that it was the last nooner they had. They just…planned a little better after that.

After five nights on the futon, Kim was quite ready for a normal bed. It seemed comfortable at first, but she just couldn't get past the strange feeling of sleeping on the floor. That was fine for camping, but not for home. She didn't know how he managed it for a whole month at Yamanuchi. She was and American and she wanted to sleep like an American, please and thank you.

Sitting back up, she pulled the wireless keyboard back out and connected to the web. Her new system was worlds better than the old one she had at home, with a widescreen flat panel monitor, all sorts of wireless gadgets and no honking big CPU dominating the desktop. Oh, it was there, but the workspace was built so it would no longer be in the way. Eventually they were going to get a dedicated T1 line installed, but that was going to have to wait for clearance from the apparently overworked maintenance department. Everything looked nice and new, but the building was over a century old after all. All in good time, she reminded herself. Wade was also working on a satellite system similar to the one the Kimmunicators worked with, making all of that obsolete.

From memory she called up an old website. It had been several years since she had visited it, and for a moment, she wondered why. Leaning on her elbow, she scrolled though pages of plain Arial text on a light gray background. What she read there wasn't perfect prose. In fact, a lot of it was written in a sort of personal shorthand that only she could completely understand. Still, with all the misspellings and punctuation glitches, what she read seemed like pure poetry.

The last entry in her old online diary almost brought her to tears. A single jpeg image was there, one that also sat on their nightstand and had once taken the place of Shego and Drakken's mug shots on the inside of her high school locker door.

_I kissed Ron for the first time last night, the first time for real at least. I never felt like this before. I once told Josh that an evening we spent together was perfect, but now I have a new idea of what perfect is. I love Ron…I love Ron…I love RON! How is it that I never noticed that before? I think now that I've loved him for a really long time. I don't know how or why, but I know now that I do. I don't know how I missed it. Of course, he's still Ron. I can barely remember anything from before we met. I should be able to, I was four, but I can't. He's still slightly shorter than me, a little soft around the middle and he can be such a dope most of the time, but I wouldn't trade him for anything in the world._

_Oh, and Ron can kiss. Boy can he kiss! I'm talking spankin, curl my toes kind of kissing. Somehow I'm going to have to find out where he learned, cause he claims he's never kissed a girl, or at least he never did before that time we kissed at my locker. If he's been kissing somebody else I'm going to be so jealous._

_He told me he loves me this morning. HE LOVES ME! He makes me want to do things I never even thought about with a guy before. Okay, I mean, I've thought about it, but I've never really considered it for real. Daddy would kill me, no, he'd kill both of us if he knew I was thinking thoughts like this, but I'm sixteen. I'm a grown woman and I'm entitled to think about it. Mom says these things should be done in love, and I do love him! He's my Ron!_

_My Ron _she thought to herself. Her online diary ended right there. From that moment her life had taken such a dramatic turn. It really was so the drama. Sure, it took them over four years to get to the point she was thinking about that one morning, as she sat alone in her room, grounded for spending the entire night out with him, just sitting on a flat boulder out on the bluff overlooking the city, kissing him and talking about what had led them to that point. She felt like she was the luckiest girl in the world then, suddenly having a boyfriend who not only like-liked her, but loved her. They didn't have to go through an awkward phase of getting to know each other, with the fear that some deep, dark secret or strange foible was going to spring up, driving a wedge between them. Sure, they didn't get that walking on a cloud feeling of new love, but they had something deeper, something they knew was real and true.

Ron was still Ron. He had grown a full six inches from that day, most of it over the following year and he had filled out somewhat. He was still on the skinny side of lean, but that soft middle had firmed up and he actually had slightly defined pecs. She decided that first night they spent together just holding hands that he was a man, despite his diminutive stature, and his body had set out to prove her right.

Her curser hovered over the 'add note' icon for a moment. She wondered if the fact her online diary had been hacked so many times by Wade was one of the reasons she had stopped. What she may or may not do with Ron from that point became very private and she feared that, massive intelligence aside, Wade was still a twelve year old at that point and he might not have had the maturity to resist looking at what were supposed to be her innermost personal thoughts. New explorations of her sexuality were so ferociously different than writing about how embarrassing it was to accidentally use the boy's bathroom at her school the first day of her freshman year.

Wade had turned sixteen a while back and seemed to have a much better handle on at least acting grown up. What would happen if she sat down and started detailing the last four years? Could she recount everything, both the good and the bad, the time her mother put both of them to bed in her room, just like she used to when they were six? Ron bringing her straight home when she accidentally got drunk at a party? The first time they actually went further than just kissing? What about their _first time_? Very few people outside of her inner circle would even believe _where_ that happened. She even wondered if she should write about her theory that they were cursed to be interrupted every time they tried until they were literally no longer on the planet any more.

She clicked the icon, but simply wrote _I love Ron_ over and over again. She followed that with _Maybe one of these first days I'll sit down and write my memoirs, then I'll sell it and make my own Naco Royalties like money._

_That'll be the day_, she thought to herself. Outside of her one-time prowess with babysitting, she had only held down a real job for a few days, before the reality that her lifestyle simply would not mesh with the working world set in. How would her world-saving 'hobby' have gone down if she wasn't the child of a rocket scientist and a brain surgeon, who brought in enough money to be considered independently wealthy? What would she do in the future if her fiancé weren't set to receive a trust fund that, the last time they looked, was worth millions?

Well, they would likely be working full time, in addition to going to classes just to pay for the apartment and all the nice furniture they put into it. Much of that had gone onto credit cards or had been financed so they wouldn't have to dip too deeply into Ron's funds before he was even supposed to get it. That way they could make payments out of his allowance for the next year. Under the conditions of his trust, once they got married (if he was twenty one) they would get the full trust. They could rush things a bit, considering she was hitting that age in a few days and Ron would a week later, but they still intended to hold off on the wedding until the following summer, after they had graduated from college.

Every now and then she thought that might have been a tad silly, waiting like that considering they pretty much were living as a married couple by that point. When she was younger, she actively told herself she would never be 'shacked up' with anyone. My how things changed when actually confronted with the reality of becoming adults.

Their living arrangements didn't sit too well with everyone they knew. Of course, all their parents and all their close friends were behind them completely, but every now and then she would catch a scrap of conversation that they were 'living in sin.' Even the pastor of her church seemed rather cold with her, though they never were especially close.

Thinking about her church reminded her of another reason she needed to wrap her work up early that evening. Ron's Rabbi, Gerry Katz was coming over for dinner that evening with his wife. So far, he had not uttered a single word about them living together, and had known about it pretty much from when they started back in the winter. She wondered how a religious leader could be down with that so easily, but was sure it would eventually come out.

Saving the few lines she had written, she hopped up out of the chair and headed into the den. Ron's head had fallen to one side, drool starting to form at the corner of his mouth. He made a good show of getting up with her that morning, but the lack of sleep simply caught up with him. She touched his cheek. "Ronnie." She said softly.

He stirred, blinking his eyes. Smiling, he pulled Kim down beside him on the couch. She wished he would have wiped his mouth, but gave into the kiss anyhow. As he started pushing her down onto the couch, she did finally have to stop him.

"Nuh uh, baby. You know this isn't a good time for that."

He slumped down, knowing precisely why. Sitting back up, she gave him a great big hug. A few days were all he had to wait, and she was having to do the waiting herself.

"Come on, we're both a little ripe. Let's get cleaned up and you can start working your other kind of magic in the kitchen."

She dragged him to his feet, leading him toward the bathroom. "Okay, KP, but remember, I need to be the one doing all the prep work tonight."

Kim crossed her eyes. "Your not going to let me forget that I was going to try glazing a ham for tonight."

"Wrong on so many levels." He said, grinning as Kim started the water, slipping out of her dirty night clothes.

"What, that I'd actually slip and think of serving ham to a Rabbi?"

"No, that you'd actually try to glaze a ham."

Kim popped him on the shoulder. "It's a good thing it's that time of the month then, cause you sure wouldn't be getting any tonight for a comment like that."

"Pfffft. Like you could survive without your regular dose of Ron shine." He slipped out of his boxers and got into the water, which, at least for the moment, was steaming hot.

She tried to be angry as she followed him, but she really had to admit…

…he was right.

* * *

a/n - Thanks to Captainkodak1 for some of the ideas in this chapter. A ring-a-ding-ding!

* * *

Kim Possible and all related characters © Disney 


	11. Part XI

**_Where You Hang Your Hat: _Part XI**

* * *

Over the last few years, Ron's Rabbi had become both a trusted spiritual advisor and a friend to both of them. At first Kim felt a bit standoffish toward him. She had occasionally gone to Ron's synagogue for important occasions such as his bar mitzvah, but her focus then had been on her best friend, not the ceremonies themselves. In fact, until a chance encounter during one of their missions back when they were just fifteen, she had never actually spoken to the man.

It wasn't until the early days of their 'dating' relationship that she really got to know him. He was in the right place at the right time to talk some sense into both of them over something that now simply made both of them laugh, but at the time threatened not only to bring their budding romance to a crashing halt, but stood the potential of wrecking almost thirteen years of friendship.

To tell the truth, up to that point she was a little afraid of the man. It was one thing for him to accept that Ron's best friend was a Gentile, yet quite another that they were dating and, in hindsight, well on their way to forming a bond that would last their lifetimes. There were people out there who could be very intolerant of things like inter-faith dating and marriage. She went in worried that she would be judged by him, that she would be weighed and measured, and found wanting simply because she believed in slightly different things and went to church on Sunday mornings instead of Temple on Saturday.

Then, after all the bad feelings stemming from their near-break-up had been resolved, Rabbi Katz offered to have the couple come in to see him on a regular basis, not so much for couple's therapy, which he was qualified to give, but for some good old-fashioned advice on just about anything they needed to talk about. It turned out he was ready to go to bat for the two of them, recognizing what was going on between them. Eventually there were some people who didn't take too kindly to a protestant (not too many people knew that specifically she was a Lutheran with an Irish Catholic-born mother) dating a Reform Jew. Every so often there would be something in the fan mail they often received that stood as a reminder of just how much hate there was in the world. Without Katz, they would have had a tough time dealing with some of those things.

Still, Kim always felt that the Rabbi's kindness always had to do with Ron first, and she was in his good graces for her then-boyfriend's benefit. That was until, during the first half of the senior year of high school, something had happened to Kim that tore into her confidence and actually resulted in her seeing a professional counselor for some time after that. Before that could happen, though, she was deep in denial over the issue. It was Gerry Katz who finally got her to open up about it and to seek the help she needed. In the end, she found his advice and counsel to be the most important of all during that time.

Kim came to realize that Rabbi Katz was more than just Ron's spiritual leader and advisor, he was a true friend.

Knowing that, Kim just couldn't figure out why she was such a bundle of nerves. They were expecting the Katzs at seven and by six she had changed clothes three times. She started off in the navy dress she normally wore when she went to Temple with Ron, but thought that was just too formal. So, she got out a pair of dress slacks and a nice sleeveless blouse. With one look in the mirror, she decided that was too casual for a dinner party, so she put on a peach colored dress that was slightly shorter than the navy one without being considered a mini.

Ron just watched her antics from the kitchen. He was spared such considerations since he was the one doing all the cooking. Even though he was kidding her about glazing a ham, there really wasn't much room for two people to work unless they were totally in sync with each other, and Kim, bless her heart, turned into a total klutz when her feet passed from the ancient hardwood of their floors to the linoleum tile of the kitchen. He kept telling himself that one day he would get Mom P to put a portable brain scanner on her and make her attempt dinner, just to see if there was actually some physiological change that came over her when she tried to handle food. She was so good at so many things, but without Ron standing over her, giving her confidence, she could still be quite dangerous. A recent attempt at pot-roast, with a recipe and cooking instructions right out on the counter, would have made a good door-stop if it weren't already on its way to a landfill.

"KP, you need to chill. We've had dinner with the Rabbi and his wife before. Come on over here, I'll pour you some of that wine Dad gave us if it'll help you relax."

"Please and thank you." She hopped up on one of the stools, drumming her close-trimmed nails on the countertop. There was only enough left in the bottle for half a glass, but that was fine with her. She probably wouldn't drink more of it than that anyhow. That was how the bottle had lasted two weeks. Ron didn't care for the stuff at all, even though he would attend wine-tasting parties from time to time in the course of his culinary studies. Just because he was now capable of suggesting the proper wine didn't mean he wanted it himself.

"KP, I haven't seen you this nervous since you had that magazine interview after getting hit with the truth ray."

"I know, Ronnie. It really should be no big, but this is the first time we've had company, I mean outside of our parents and all. We just got finished putting this place together…"

"…and you feel like we're going to be judged. Babe, we're talking about Rabbi Katz here, the same guy who has to move a stack of magazines off the couch in his office when we go in to visit him. I don't think we have much to worry. Besides, this place looks badical! Who knew you had a home designer in you."

She smiled warmly at him and took a sip of the wine. It was supposed to be served at room temperature, but neither of them liked it that way, so it was chilled. For some reason it did have a calming affect, but that had much more to do with the act of drinking it and paying attention to the complex flavors than anything the minimal amount of alcohol she had ingested could do.

"You are changing, aren't you?"

"Think I should?" he held up his arms. He was wearing a brightly colored tropical shirt, one he called a 'High-waiin Flowerdy shirt' along with a pair of tan Bermuda shorts and sandals. Along with the fact he had deliberately gone a couple days without shaving, he looked like something that Margarita guy would sing about…or sit down at a bar and have a beer or twelve with.

"Most def. I laid some slacks and a light shirt out for you. They may be our friends, but this is going to be done properly tonight." She leaned over the counter, cupping his cheek. "You're going to shave too."

"Aw, man. I was liking this. Do I have to?"

"S'ha. Keep that up and I'll ride over to the house and get Dad's old pastel jacket, so you can push the sleeves up."

Both Ron and Rufus cringed at the thought. "Come on, KP. Let me at least keep a goatee."

Kim pulled a face, then pointed at the futon couch in the den. She didn't have to say another word. He was going to be clean shaven or that was where he was going to be spending his nights.

"Okay, I've got just about everything set. Think you can handle setting the table?"

She shot him another dirty look and hopped off the stool, finishing off her glass.

Fifteen minutes later, Kim stopped him on his way to their bed area and checked him out. The beard was gone, and so was his shirt. "Mmmm, I like that." She stroked his freshly bare cheeks with both hands. "Almost makes me wish we didn't have company coming."

He gave her a little 'Eskimo kiss,' not wanting to smudge her makeup. "Better let me get dressed, or this is how Rabbi's going to see me tonight."

She shooed him quickly into their 'room.' He came back out none-to-soon, as a soft knock announced their guests, roughly ten minutes early.

"Come on in, Rabbi, Mrs. Katz. Mi casa es su casa!"

"Gracias, Señor Stoppable, Señorita Possible. Como esta usted?" he grinned at the two of them. Like Ron, Gerry Katz had studied a little Spanish in high school and college. Again, like the younger man, most of his practice with the language came from a love of Mexican style food. None of them noticed Kim's light blush when he used the title 'señorita' for her. "I hope we're not too early." He asked.

"I was telling Gerry it's a lot better to be early than late." His wife, a fifty-ish, slightly heavy woman explained. Kim had only met her on a couple occasions outside of the synagogue and found she reminded her a lot of one of Ron's great aunts. At least in appearance. Neither of them had spoken to Gram Rokowski's sisters since they openly tried to forbid their relationship. Frances Katz could be very conservative and traditional, but did not butt into the affairs of others.

"I brought this as a housewarming gift…and I think it would be appropriate to consider it a birthday gift as well, since you really shouldn't get into it for a few more days." He handed Kim a bottle of wine. Ron's eyes went up, signaling it was a very nice bottle, though she had no idea herself. "Just promise you won't open it until you do turn twenty-one next week."

"Yes sir. Oh, and thank you, it looks like a really good wine." She handed the bottle to Ron, who put it into their previously empty wine rack in the nearby kitchen.

Dinner progressed pretty much as expected, with all kinds of small talk. A lot of it centered on the Katz's daughter, who had just left for Israel to study there. Following in her father's footsteps, she was planning to become a Rabbi herself, and despite the inherent danger, had her heart set on studying over there. Frances asked Ron if he ever considered studying there after he graduated, but he confessed that the thought never really crossed his mind.

"It's interesting that the two of you have never been called on a mission there." Rabbi Katz commented over desert.

"One of the few places." Ron mentioned. "Maybe we'll go there next year after we get married. Of course, by then we'll be busy getting settled into our house, but we've got to get to Jerusalem one of these days. Bethlehem too, for Kim's sake."

Kim blushed again when Ron brought up their nuptials, planned for just under a year from then. This time the slight flush of her cheeks didn't go unnoticed by the older man, though he simply took a sip of his tea. "Be sure to let me know when you get ready to go. I'm sure your travel credentials are better than most, but I can give you some good advice none-the-less."

Ron got up and started clearing some of the plates off the table. Kim started to help, but the Rabbi motioned for her to sit down. "You're not quite done, I'm sure Frances wouldn't mind helping Ronald in the kitchen."

She sat back in her chair, suddenly feeling very small as she was left at the table while the other two started with the clean-up.

"Uh, we didn't goof on the food. Ron doesn't exactly keep too kosher."

"Not a problem, Kimberly. Some of my favorite foods aren't exactly true kosher anyway. I can't got to New York city without stopping by Katz Deli for a huge pastrami reuben, and despite being traditional 'deli' food, all that melted cheese on the meat isn't exactly by the rules."

"Oh. Guess I've got a lot to learn, huh?"

"I wouldn't sweat it. Now, are you going to tell me what's had you on pins and needles all evening?"

Kim looked away from him. "Nothing. I'm just fine." She lied.

He leaned back in his seat. "Maybe we should have waited until after your birthday. Some of that wine would be very nice right about now. Anyway, I couldn't help but notice the two of you have suddenly stopped coming to see me since, say, about mid-winter."

The redness returned to Kim's face. He nodded.

"You're worried I'm about to lay into you about living together before you actually get married, aren't you?"

Kim's mouth popped open, but nothing came out. Slowly, she nodded.

"I thought so. Every time the two of you brought up the wedding, you either blushed or got really quiet there. Still, you've only lived here, what, just over two weeks?"

"Yes sir."

"Yet for five months now the only time I've seen the two of you was when you could both make it to Temple. Nothing's wrong, is there?"

"No. Actually, things have been going great. One more year of college and we'll be all set."

He considered things for a moment. "You haven't had an recurrence of the dreams, have you?"

She shook her head emphatically. "No sir. Nothing like that."

"Well, then, if I may be so bold, I would guess then that the two of you don't feel like you need to sit down and talk with me any more. While it would seem nice that you've grown that much, it would be sad, since I really do enjoy our conversations. Now, fairly soon, we are all going to have to sit down and start the real, official pre-marriage counseling. That is, if you still want me to perform the ceremony."

"Oh yes, of course. It's just…" She stopped, looking away again.

"Uh huh. Then perhaps something has changed between you and Ronald, something you don't feel comfortable discussing?"

"I…we…well, you know."

"Kimberly, you feel like you are going to be judged, don't you?"

"Yes." She answered softly, casting a glance over toward the kitchen area.

He chewed his lip for a moment, a gesture that was partially lost with his long beard. "That change, it happened last winter, didn't it?"

"Yes sir."

"I see. Kimberly…Kim, we've talked a great deal about this sort of thing in the past. Yes, I can't help but feel like you may have jumped the gun a little bit, but it's not unexpected. The whole time the two of you have been together, I mean together as a couple, you have been bumping up against this very issue. To be honest with you, I would have thought this would come a lot earlier than it did. A blind man can see just how intense the feelings you have for each other are.

"While officially, my position carries with it certain platitudes and yes, laws concerning what goes on between the two of you before you are truly married, I am not about to judge you. That is really between you and God. Really, if it were just up to me, I'd be one of the first people to say the two of you should already be married, and I don't mean just the fact the two of you could live together. Very often, I have to tell couples who are in your position they are way too young to consider such things.

"That doesn't apply to your case, however. When I tell someone that, it's because I see something in their relationship that could cause it to sour. When I see young people together, I want to help them on a path to being complete partners. There's far too many people getting together for the wrong reasons, resulting in divorce, or worse, two people staying together because they think it's the right thing to do when they really shouldn't be. Tell me something. Why is it that I shouldn't pick the two of you up tomorrow, take you down to the county courthouse and get a marriage license?"

"I…don't know. I guess it always seemed so practical to wait until after college. Ron will get our…his money. We'll have a nice house. Stuff like that."

"Okay. That sounds reasonable. So tell me, what's the difference between how you are living now and being married? You live together, and apparently have for some months now."

"You knew about that?"

He smiled warmly. "You aren't the only people I counsel. I did help Ron's father through his rough patch a couple years ago, and he still comes to talk to me on a regular basis. Also, your father, James, has proven to be my nemesis on the golf course. One of these days I'm going to break eighty five and beat him. In the mean time, he's spent a great deal of time talking about you and Ronald while we're walking the course. I'll let you in on a little secret. I think I'm the one who planted a little seed in his head about giving you a gentle nudge out of the nest."

She gulped. At the time, it really didn't seem all that much like a gentle nudge, but that had more to do with the relationship she had with her Dad. Still, they did decide once that was resolved to move out anyway, hence their new apartment.

He went on. "You live together, I would assume you sleep together since there's only one bed in here." He nodded toward their screened sleeping area. "I imagine there is sex involved. So, what's the difference besides having a piece of paper that says you're married, setting religious implications aside?"

She sat and thought about that. Everything he said was actually true. She even felt like she was married. All that remained was to get that document and start calling herself Mrs. Stoppable instead of Miss Possible. That's why his use of the Spanish title for an unmarried woman had affected her so.

"So, what are you saying, Rabbi? That we should go ahead and do it?"

"Well…no. If you had come to me and asked me last winter, I would have easily said yes. Then we would have had the time to properly prepare. I still won't perform a marriage without proper counseling first, so we've got that to look forward to.

"The main thing I want to get at tonight, though, is that you should relax. I'm not here to judge you, I'm here as a friend celebrating the founding of a new home, that's all."

"Okay, I'll try." She smiled slightly, feeling a little better. "Rabbi, there is something I've been meaning to talk to you about."

"What's that?"

"I was thinking that maybe…maybe I should convert."

"Really?" He looked surprised at the statement. Then he switched gear slightly. This was territory he was quite familiar with. "Why?"

"Well, for one thing, if…when we have children, it's my understanding they won't technically be Jewish unless their mother is."

"Is that all?"

"That, and I love Ron so much."

"So, you know that converting is a very long, difficult process. You've learned a lot about your fiancé's faith, but there is so much more you would need to learn."

"I'm willing to do whatever it takes."

"Let me ask you this, Kimberly. Do you want to do this because Ron is Jewish, or because this is what your heart is telling you to do?"

That took her aback. "Aren't those two the same thing?"

"No, they're not. Your heart telling you to do it because you think it's the right thing for his sake is different from what you believe between you and God deep in your heart. I won't go into what you believe right now as a Christian, but do you believe what I have had to teach in Temple?"

"For the most part, at least what I can understand, yes?"

"Does that conflict with what you believe as a Christian?"

She thought about that for a moment. "Some of it, yes."

"Okay, I'll tell you this. Don't make a decision yet. I know you are a good person, and that is not going to change whether you remain a Christian or if you do convert. Have you talked to Ronald about this?"

"No. I guess I wanted to sound the idea out with you first."

"Right there may be part of the answer. You're just about to turn twenty-one. You've got a lot of time for something this important. In the end, you have to decide what you need to be right with God. Do you understand that?"

"I think so."

"Good. See, this is all the more reason I should sit down and talk to the two of you from time to time, and not just the two of you together. Now, if you don't mind, I'd like some more of this banana pudding, if there's any left."

"I'll be right back." She started to pick up his plate, but stopped and gave him a hug. "Thanks."

"That's what friends are for." He said, returning the hug.

* * *

Kim Possible and all related characters © Disney 


	12. Part XII

**_Where You Hang Your Hat: _Part XII**

* * *

Milestones.

The older Kim got, the faster they seemed to arrive. She remembered some of the others in her life. Waiting to turn twelve so she would not need a babysitter of her own any more. Waiting to turn thirteen so she could be called a teenager. Waiting to turn fifteen so she would be allowed to date boys (though in hindsight there really wasn't that much difference between that and what she had already done for year with Ron) Sixteen, of course, was one of the big ones, though it paled in comparison to eighteen. The countdown to that particular age seemed one of the slowest in her life.

A day short of turning twenty-one, the age where she would be an adult in everyone's eyes, Kim started wondering if it was a mistake for a young person to rush toward all those particular milestones, without enjoying that time of their life.

Really, when she sat down and thought about it, not much was going to change in twenty-four hours. She sat on her stool at the breakfast counter, munching contentedly on a bowl of cereal. The wine rack was visible across the kitchen, sitting on the counter right beside the fridge. Two other bottles had joined the one the Katzs brought them, one from each set of parents. The fact that, as of midnight she could legally go into the wine shop or grocery store and buy those bottles herself really wasn't that important to her. It was entirely likely that, with the exception of ordering a glass for herself when they ate out for her birthday, she really had no plans for opening any of it. Ron was much the same as her, being much more likely to order a Coke than a beer a week later when he caught up to her.

He was a little funny about his birthday. Once Kim caught on that he was calling himself a Virgo, though his birthday was August fifth. She explained to him that he was actually a Leo, since Virgo's birthdays started at the end of the month. He looked absolutely dumbfounded, having thought for most of his life the astrological signs matched up with the months. For about a day he went around like his fundamental view of the world had changed. Then he just simply reverted to normal. For one thing, if his birthday had actually fallen after August 23rd, the would have been on the cusp of being a whole year behind Kim in school, and that would not have boded well for the two of them.

Kim was just a little tweaked that, at some point, over the course of her birthday, Ron was going to say something about being with an older woman. She was exactly one week older than him, which didn't amount to much in the grand scheme of things. Then he would start going on that it was destiny that two people who could have easily been born on the same day would become so inextricably entwined in each other. That did create an interesting, but utterly unprovable theory of Kim's, that they might not have been born on the same day, but had been conceived at the same moment. That would certainly explain a few things.

The apartment felt very empty to her that morning. Ron had to meet with his major advisor that morning to chart the course of his final year of college. Kim laughed silently, thinking how easy he had it at this point. Come Monday, she was going to have to make a presentation to not only her advisor, but a review board for her Senior Project. All that work was finished, stored on her computer until she was ready to transfer it to her laptop for her presentation. Her confidence level was quite high. Over the course of the first three years she had developed a good rapport with her counselor and she had already been given the go ahead for the direction her coursework would take. She was not only looking to complete her last year of undergraduates studies, but on the road to a doctorate, and very likely even a PHD. It was going to be so spankin to be called "Doctor" just like her parents. Actually, she was going to be the first Stoppable to have that title.

She picked at her bowl. All her life she had practically lived on cold cereal, being the only breakfast she could easily fix herself. Large breakfasts only came on days when her mother was either off from the Medical Center or had to go in later. Then, once Ron started living with her, he would often beat her to the kitchen, actually cooking her something, spoiling her forever. Even something simple like scrambled eggs and toast was great when he fixed it.

None of that was forthcoming that morning. Ron was up at the crack of dawn getting ready. She looked up at him sleepily, admiring how nice he looked all dressed up. For a moment she thought she would actually have to get up and help him with his tie; he never could do it properly himself, but Rufus appeared and did it for him, giving her the golden opportunity of staying in bed.

Of course, that wasn't normally her style, but they had been up way past midnight, starting out watching a late movie on cable and then moving their post-show activities from the couch to their bedroom. How Ron was able to not only function but look bright and chipper that morning, she had no idea. The bed was too soft and comfortable for her to get out of it, so she simply accepted a very nice (and toothpaste fresh) kiss from him, snuggled up with one of his pillows and fell back into a deep sleep in the ocean of comfort that was their new queen sized bed. After that, she didn't know how they ever were able to be comfortable together in her smaller full sized bed.

She noted a small, pink shape climbing up onto the counter. At nearly nine years old, they at first thought Rufus would be getting along in years and for a while he did seem to be slowing down, but the vet they took him to explained that naked mole rats were known to live far longer than most other rodents, and he was literally just reaching his prime. It turned out his slowdown was the result of getting way too fat for his kind.

That certainly didn't make him happy. Rufus was well known for his 'Seafood diet,' or more accurately, a 'See-food diet.' He'd eat anything put in front of him and come begging for more, pantomiming starvation. Forcing him to eat measured quantities of a specifically formulated diet was one of the toughest things they ever did. Coupled with the fact he didn't get to sleep with them all that much (he did respect their privacy when things turned romantic) he spent a lot of time being somewhat grumpy.

"Hungry, Rufus?" She scratched the back of his neck, causing him to purr in a very good impression of a housecat.

"Uh huh" he squeaked quite clearly. It was funny that, about the time they had begun growing together romantically that she could understand what the little guy was saying. Before it had just been incomprehensible animal squeaks, though he was obviously significantly more intelligent than a creature of his nature had any right to be.

"Don't tell Ron this." She opened the fridge, pulling out a rectangular block wrapped in aluminum foil. She cut about an inch off the bar of cheddar, handing it to Rufus. He beamed, instantly devouring more than half the small block. "Hey, take your time, enjoy it. That's all you're getting until lunch time, and that's going to be Rufus-chow."

He glared at her a moment, holding the block in one paw while sticking out his 'pinky' claw before taking a more modest bite. She nodded and went back to her Captain Crunch, wanting to finish it before it got too soggy. He took one more bite that way before inhaling the rest of it. She scratched his neck again, knowing he couldn't help himself. Given his druthers, he would have done the same with the entire block of cheese, but she'd rather have him healthy and slightly cross than turning into a little pink ball of blubber.

"You know, Rufus, I would have liked some company after Ron left. For that matter, you could have joined us when we went to sleep. You're more than welcome to sleep with us."

He rolled his little black eyes, muttering something that sounded like "Pfffft, mush!"

She smiled warmly. Wherever he disappeared to while she was with Ron apparently he wasn't able to tell when they were done, or at least he was probably asleep by then. She wished they could find him a girl mole rat for a companion, but in all the years since Ron bought him at Smarty Mart, she hadn't seen another one for sale in any pet section or pet shop. The local zoo had a colony, but they clearly weren't in the business of supplying females to live as pets. Maybe one day they would find themselves in his native lands in Africa and then he'd have a chance to find a mate. Until then, he was pretty much destined to be alone.

There was a soft knock at the door. In itself that was a little strange, unless it was her Dad. After that one visit, he always knocked instead of ringing, though he also called first instead of arriving unannounced.

She hopped off the stool and checked herself. All she was wearing was one of Ron's old jerseys and her underwear. It covered her completely, but while she considered running to the bedroom to slip on a pair of shorts, the visitor knocked again, a little more urgently. Well, if it was her father, then no matter. He had seen her dressed that way many, many times since she started dating Ron, having absconded with one of his shirts for that very reason.

"Coming." She called, hoping it was her father and not a stranger. She lived in fear that one day she'd open the door and a flash would go off, only to see a picture of her in her pajamas splashed across every tabloid in the checkout lane within the week.

Her mouth dropped open, noting her visitor was somewhat shorter than her father. In fact, it was almost like looking in the mirror, with the exception that the newcomer had brown hair and turquoise eyes instead of her flame red and emerald green.

"Joss? What are you doing here? I thought you had a training session at GJ all this week?" Part of the reason her younger cousin had moved to Middleton was to complete her education as an agent of the international law enforcement organization, gobbling up the greater portion of the summer before her Senior year in high school.

"Good morning to you too, Kim." She said sourly. "Not going today."

She noticed as the younger woman came in how she was dressed. She was wearing a tight black sports top and olive green cargo shorts turned up at the bottom, showing off her deeply tanned features. Years spent outdoors on her father's ranch had provided the darker skin-tone, though it did tend to darken her freckles as well.

"Is something wrong?" Kim said, taking a seat at the dining room table.

Joss took off her small pack and set it aside. "It's Uncle James. I've had it with him. He's turnin' out ten times worse than Daddy."

_Oh boy_. Besides her Global Justice training, the real reason Slim Possible had sent her to live with her aunt and uncle was to try and calm her burgeoning rebel spirit. Slim could be as conservative as his younger brother, but being a single parent, he was having a very tough time taming his wild child. Owning a ranch populated by a number of hands in their late teens and early twenties didn't help much either. He caught her with them one time too many and almost blew his top.

"Kim, can I come and stay with you and Ron for a little while? I just don't want to go back there right now."

"Um…Joss, I really don't think that's a good idea. We don't have all that much room."

"Please, Kim. It's just for a little bit. I won't be a bother, and I can help with the upkeep."

"Whoa, just hold on there, Joss. What's this about anyway?"

"It's yer Daddy. He keeps tellin me I've gotta be home by ten. It's like he thinks I'm nothin but a little girl."

She nodded sagely. They were already treading on dangerous ground. By the time Kim was her age the curfew had been lifted, within reason, but that had a whole lot more to do with the level of trust her father had in Ron. "Let me guess, you didn't make it home in time last night?"

"I was ten minutes late. Wasn't like a was doin anything. It's like he doesn't trust me or somethin."

Kim pursed her lips. "Well, honestly, have you given him a reason to?"

Her cousin was clearly angry. "Why should I have to? I'm seventeen. In a few months I'm turnin eighteen. I'm a grown woman. I can up and be on the other side of the planet at a moments notice, but if I so much as try to kiss a boy, he gets all on his high horse about it."

"Sounds familiar. So how is coming to stay here going to change any of that?"

"Cause you know what I'm goin through. You've got Ron. Heck, you've been with him for so long now…I just want the same thing."

She let out a deep breath. "Joss, this may sound ferociously personal, but…is part of the reason you're here because you were with a boy? I mean _with_ him? She added special emphasis to the word 'with,' hoping she was getting her point across.

Joss looked away, unable to meet Kim's eyes. "Yer sayin, am I a virgin? Nope."

Kim sat back in her chair, crossing her arms. "What's that got to do with anything. You've been with Ron since you were sixteen, and they didn't say nothin 'bout that."

"Oh boy, you don't know the half of it. Joss, hard as it may be to believe it, I was clear up until last February, and even then I had been with Ron for almost four years."

"Oh, come on, Kim. You mean to tell me in all that time…"

"Yes, Joss. Is this what all this is about? Were you out on a date aiming to do more than kiss?"

"Well, yeah…kinda."

"Then exactly what is your point in coming here? It's not like I'm going to allow any of that to go on here."

"Why not? You and Ron do."

"Okay, hold on there. I think you're missing the point. You said it yourself that Ron and I have been together a long time now. I love Ron with all my heart, and that's a lot more important than anything we do. Have you ever loved anyone like that?"

"Well…not really."

"And have you taken into consideration I'm over three years older than you?"

"That's not that big a difference. Like I said, I'm a grown woman."

Kim shook her head. "No, you're not. Look, Joss, I love you like a sister, but the fact of the matter is that those three years make a big difference. I'm going to be twenty-one tomorrow, you won't be eighteen until this fall. That means you're still a minor, and Dad is in effect your guardian. I'm afraid the answer is no. If I let you stay here, even just to cool off for a bit, that's going behind Dad's back, and I'm not about to do that."

Joss' hands balled up into fists. "You're just like the rest of them. You just don't want me around cause you think I'd be bringin in some boy to sleep with him, all while yer sleepin with Ron. Yer not that much older than me, so what's the difference?"

"I already told you what the difference is, Joss. When you turn eighteen, you're welcome to go out on your own and do what you please. Believe me, it's not as easy as it seems. For instance, how much do you make?"

"I get a stipend from GJ. It's not much."

Kim nodded, putting her finger on the table. "I've got a pretty good idea what those stipends are like. Ron and I used to be under an independent contract with GJ, and let me tell you, some of those checks were only big enough to pay for a nice dinner, let alone pay for the utilities, the rent, buy groceries. Face it, cousin, you're in for a ferociously tough go of things. Plus, have you thought of how long that stipend might be coming in if you flake on your duties like you're apparently doing today?"

"I can do it. Daddy and Uncle James are always sayin that anythin's possible for a Possible, well, check my name."

Kim sighed deeply. "Joss, I hate to say this, but you've still got a lot to learn. There's a whole lot more to life than just going around with boys. If you had somebody in your life like Ron, it might be different, but you don't. Have you even had a steady boyfriend, like, ever?"

"I've tried, but Daddy always run em off, and your Daddy's doin the same thing. Sounds like that's what you wanna do too."

"Joss, it's because we love you and we know what's best for you, even if you don't."

Joss got up from the table, grabbing her pack as she went. "No you don't. You get to have it all, and I get the leavins. Just forget I even asked. I thought I could depend on you and Ron, but I guess I was wrong." With that she turned and stormed out the door, slamming it as she left.

Kim sat there at the table, drumming her fingernails.

_That certainly went well._

* * *

Kim Possible and all related characters © Disney 


	13. Part XIII

**_Where You Hang Your Hat: _Part XIII**

* * *

The clatter of pots and pans didn't wake Kim up, but the smells sure did. She slowly emerged from under the covers, pushing a huge lock of her sleep-frazzled hair away from here eyes. As she could have guessed, considering the whole apartment smelled like frying bacon, Ron was already up. She snuggled back down on the pillow, closing her eyes, not yet willing to yield the cozy bed. A little pout formed on her lips, a fraction of the power that was her PDP, since she would have like a 'little wake-up call' on her special day.

At least Rufus was happy. He was snoring softly, curled up in a little ball on the upper reaches of her pillow pile. He took her invitation to return to their bed later at night to heart, though she wasn't quite sure how he would take the fact that she, like him, was currently naked under the covers. Her purple satin nightie was lying in a pile with a pair of silk boxers. It would be one thing if they had a cat or a dog to watch her get up like that, but Rufus wasn't a pet. He was family, and he was also intelligent and emotional. Kim really wasn't prone to sleeping like that, or at least she hadn't been. She was just so relaxed and sleepy the night before she quickly drifted off, sleeping soundly until the wonderful aromas awakened her.

The distinctive smell of hazelnut coffee was mixing in, making her mouth water even more. Not only that, but she had come to associate coffee with something else, and it had been over nine hours. She had to get up. Hopefully she could jump out of bed and slip back into her night clothes before the sleepy little rodent could wake up.

The solution to the dilemma came to her as another wave of breakfasty smells assailed her nostrils. "Rufus. Wake up, sleepyhead. I bet Ronnie's cooking with cheese. Why don't you go tell him I said you could have some."

She didn't have to say it twice. He stretched once and bounded out of the room. Kim sat up in the bed, keeping the covers over her front and stretched. Instead of putting on the skimpy negligee, she pulled a teal colored t-shirt out of her drawer and slipped it over her head. A double-extra-large, it hung on her like a pup tent, but it was comfortable, and, oddly enough, had much the same effect on Ron as the camisole. Maybe it was the fact he knew what she normally had on under that particular shirt, which wasn't much.

He had his back to her as she padded to the bathroom, then scurried back to bed. She suspected something, and wanted to maintain the illusion, except for the fact she kept the old "Save the Manatees" shirt on.

With Ron gone for the entire morning and the better part of the afternoon the day before, Kim was left with either walking someplace, calling a cab or even calling Wade to send the Blue Fox Flyer over. One drawback that was rapidly becoming apparent with their location was the lack of useful places in walking distance. The funky, 'arts' neighborhood near the campus was nearby, but most of that really didn't start up until later in the afternoon. There wasn't any place she needed to go that would require a wingless flying car with twenty-fifth century ion engines, and she didn't want to have to actually park that at the mall anyway, so she ended up deciding to go out for a walk simply for its own sake. It was one of the times she wished they had more than one car between them, but most of the time they did stuff together, making a second vehicle wasteful.

Before she went out, she had to take care of something else first. After a quick shower she pulled out her cell-phone to call her father. Her short, sharp discussion with Joss was bothering her. She didn't want to go behind her younger cousin's back, but she also wanted to give her Dad a heads up on what the seventeen year old might be up to. Unfortunately, it turned out he was in an important meeting over at the Space Center.

That left her with either leaving things alone and letting them sort themselves out without butting in, or doing what she felt was in everyone's best interests. She really did consider Joss to be like a sister and a very good friend, but there was always the danger she would do something stupid like hopping on a bus for Montana, or worse, for someplace unknown. Joss was tough as nails, but she simply did not have the worldly experience Kim had, nor was she was well trained. Even more than that, given her reasoning, she might make some rather unwise decisions that would cause nothing but heartache throughout the family.

Trying to straddle the line, she called to check on her. It was her mother's day off and she was home getting the boy's room ready for their return from camp. Her mind was put at rest when her Mom told her Joss had stormed into the house, put on her grey and black trainee's uniform and headed for the tube-way out front. She was going to be hell on wheels with her instructors, but at least they knew how to keep her in line. The military-like discipline would do her some good.

What remained was to try and patch things up with her. They were close enough in age that maybe a double date wouldn't be out of the question. That way they could see firsthand what her latest suitor was like, and either put her Dad's mind at ease, or find a way to tell her he was after nothing more than getting in her wranglers. Somehow she figured the truth was somewhere in the middle.

She almost dozed back off when Ron stepped through the gap in the screens, bearing a makeshift 'breakfast in bed' tray. "Wake up, sleepyhead. Got on the computer when I got up this morning, and guess what the headlines in the Internet News Networks were?"

"Let me guess, this time they've spotted me in Paris with Leonardo?"

"Nah, at least that wasn't the big headline. Uh, since when were you into Ninja Turtles?"

"Leonardo Dicaprio, bonehead." She motioned with her hands for him to continue.

"No, the big headline read, Kim Possible – Finally Legal! Happy birthday, KP."

"Thanks baby." She gave him a quick kiss as he sat down on the bed beside her.

He glanced behind her, realizing for the first time she had her old manatee shirt on. "Hey, when did you put that on? I thought you were in your birthday suit, in honor of today."

"Got cold." She poured a healthy dollop of syrup on her French toast. In the past she didn't like it, but Ron found out the trick was baking them briefly after browning them in a pan, to keep the insides from being soggy. That cured the one complaint she had about them and in the process found out she loved them (as long as there was plenty of strawberry syrup and butter for them.)

In keeping with always doing thing together, Ron had his own plate, replete with enough bacon to keep him from ever being properly kosher. He drizzled maple syrup on his, including the bacon and dug in. Even Rufus had a plate, though he only nibbled on his 'Rufus' chow, staring at their fare from time to time.

"So, what does the birthday girl want to do today? The mall? The beach? Head for Roadhouse Grill and get seriously tanked on Guinness?" For the most part, Kim didn't like beer, but she had tasted the dark brew at a party, finding, like black, unsweetened coffee, she rather enjoyed it. Maybe it was her Irish heritage. Still, she knew from a couple bad experiences she didn't handle alcohol all that well and had gained a great deal of respect for it.

She set down her fork and tickled his knee. "I was thinking you'd have given me a little wake-up call. I could doze back off, if Rufus wouldn't mind." She ran her hand up his leg, slightly up under his tan cargo shorts. "After all, I'm 'legal' now."

"Not quite yet. You really won't be twenty-one until nine seventeen tonight."

She took the tray off her knees, carefully balancing it on the nightstand and scooted closer to him. "I was legally twenty-one as of midnight this morning. I thought you had this fantasy of being with an _older_ woman."

"I thought I was. You're a week older than me all year long."

"Phooey. For seven days I'm a whole year older than you. Come here, big boy. I wanna play with my boy-toy."

"Ah, aren't you going to finish your breakfast while it's still hot? I figured you'd be hungry."

"Oh, I'm hungry, alright." She took his plate and set it down on the tray, half crawling half rolling back toward him. He tasted like maple syrup as she kissed him, knowing she had a good bit of strawberry syrup on her own mouth. Ron's hair was still a mess, or, more accurately, more of a mess than usual. Bed-head and cowlicks didn't exactly go together. He also still had a good, strong 'Ron-scent' to him, which meant they could still share the shower. All the much better. She pulled his yellow tank top over his head and pushed him down onto the pillows, nibbling on his earlobe while stroking the outer edge of his large ear with her hand.

Rufus was almost buried under the teal t-shirt as he scampered from the bedroom. He wasn't upset, especially since he knew Ron left some extra French toast out on the counter.

* * *

Kim's wrist Kimmunicator chimed on in the canvas bag that sat nearby. It wasn't the harsh four not tone that signaled an emergency, but a soft musical note set as a reminder. Moving as few muscles as possible, she rolled onto her belly, carefully unknotting the red, yellow and black striped bikini top so her tan could even out. She hadn't had a tan that deep since she was fifteen, having spent a week of her summer down in the swamps of Florida helping out with the same people who provided her with her long T-shirt. Only then the tan only extended as far as her bare midriff and her forearms. This summer had finally afforded her the opportunity to slowly, carefully build her base up to a golden hue.

The splashing nearby was most likely Ron. He had learned from plenty of experience his fair skin simply did not tan. He burned. Kim made him strip down and covered every inch of him with sunblock spray before they even left the apartment, then put another coat on him when they arrived, just in case. They both got a rather severe burn several years earlier when both their families took a trip down to Florida, leaving Kim with tan lines that took a full year to completely fade. Even with her tan, she had put on a less powerful sunscreen herself, but would call Ron over to spray the stronger stuff on once the Kimmunicator chimed again. That was pain she would not soon forget, as well as the marks her dangerously skimpy suit left on her then.

Her new suit was still quite small, but a great deal more conservative than that one had been. The beach at Lake Middleton was quite popular with families, so they were surrounded by kids ranging from diapers to college students like themselves, as well as assorted parents and older couples enjoying the brilliant, late July day. That particular suit was quickly relegated to more private swimming opportunities, considering it was white and had a particular habit of becoming very slightly transparent when wet and if the light hit it just right. Ron had taken to calling it her hot tub suit.

She tilted her head slightly so her sunglasses wouldn't dig into her temples quite so much. Looking up the beach, she noticed another family just walking from the parking lot. It was like someone had taken the two of them and added ten to fifteen years to them. In those intervening years, two small children had come along. They were both little girls, with long auburn hair just a shade darker than hers. One of them looked about the age she had been when she first met Ron, with her hair pulled into pigtails. The vision was complete, right down to the purple suit she had on.

Their parents looked just like them, save their hair color was reversed. The little girls looked like they were about to make a break for the water, but their mother stopped them, slathering them with what must have been half the bottle of sunscreen. Well oiled, the girls looked distinctly less happy than they had been moments earlier, but it really was for the best. They would learn a whole new level of unhappiness if their skin tried to do an impression of their hair.

One thing struck her as she watched them. The two parents seemed to be as devoted to their children as she was to Ron. That was one thing that bothered her about the prospect of raising a family with him. She was truly happy with her life the way it was. It may have seemed selfish, but she wanted to spend a good, long time just the way she was with him before she had to share her heart with a child. There was little doubt that both of them would be much the same way when it finally actually happened, but for the moment, she just wanted her Ron. She was only twenty-one, or would be in about six hours. That could come along in five to ten years, preferably the latter. By then she would be finished with her doctorate and established in a career, and Ron would be a famous chef in the finest restaurant in Middleton, or wherever they lived by that point if they ever decided to leave.

As the tots ran past her, she started thinking about just that. She never really had considered leaving town. There just wasn't much reason to. Some kids left because they felt a need to severe their ties to the past, or, like Monique, simply settled down where they went to school. Others still left to pursue careers they could not do so at home. None of those pressures existed for them, at least for the moment. They went to school at home, and even though they were only two semesters from graduating, they still didn't have a firm idea of what they were going to be doing afterwards. It was amazing how much pressure having a nest-egg like Ron's could take off of them. Then too, there was no particular reason for her to break away from her family. They might live under a new roof now, but both families remained tight. Besides, she still routinely got a chance to practice her future parenting skills with Ron's little sister, who would be turning three at the end of summer, and even, on occasion, baby sat Amethyst Argus, the two year-old daughter of the woman who was once known as Shego. That was oddly appropriate, since she had seen the little girl born in the very room her cousin Joss was now living in.

Her bracelet chimed once more, so she carefully re-tied her top before sitting up. Ron was a good hundred feet out on the lake, lazily floating on his back. Instead of bothering him, she got the spray out and put it on herself. If she missed a spot with the supposedly waterproof stuff, she would know about it later. It was time to cool off. Clicking her bracelet back on, just in case, she started toward the water, headed straight in Ron's direction.

With two years under her belt on the Middleton High School swim team and the diving squad, Kim not only swam well, but fast. She was strong enough to swim submerged even with a life jacket on. She waded out into about three feet of water and dove in head first, hugging the slightly silted bottom where the manmade beach ended. The water was a bit on the murky side, especially with so many kids stirring up the bottom, but she had a good sense of distance and direction submerged. Kicking off the bottom, she spotted her target; a man-shaped object wearing knee-length red board shorts.

Slowing, just below the surface, she cupped her hands just so and gradually kicked upwards. Ron's eyes were closed and his hands were stretched out to the sides, stabilizing him as he floated, so he didn't see the clasped hands rise from the water. That is, until they shot a stream of water that had been cupped inside. His chest was up, out of the water and relatively dry since he had been marinating there for a bit. The relatively cold water shocked him fully awake.

The thrashed around in the water for a moment, until he felt a pair of strong, slender arms wrap around him. They both bobbed to the surface, brushing water-slicked hair out of their faces.

"What we have here…is a failure to hydrate. If a splash war is what she wants, a splash war is what she gets." Ron laughed, horribly mangling the quote from _Cool Hand Luke_.

Kim chose a pre-emptive strike, sending a wave of water washing over his head while diving under once more. Ron was a strong swimmer himself, but relied on swim-fins and goggles when their missions required aquatics. His eyesight wasn't as strong as hers, so she had a distinct advantage.

He popped back to the surface, sputtering. Kim wasn't so far behind.

"Oh no, you didn't. Not here!"

"Uh huh." She held his trunks up out of the water, waving them like a flag.

"KP! Come on! You know you don't wear anything under those. Give em back!"

"You gonna make me? It's my birthday, I want me a pair of red shorts."

He looked around nervously. The vast majority of other swimmers were much younger than them and were considerably closer to shore. Still, his pale features were slowly becoming as red as the trunks, and it wasn't from sunburn.

"Kim, it's bad enough to lose them on my own. You're the one who says time and place, and THIS AIN'T NEITHER!"

"Thought you liked it when I pulled off your pants, loverboy?" She laughed, treading a little further from him, holding his swimwear just under the water.

"That's…in private. Okay, you win, what do you want?"

"Well, I have already unwrapped my birthday present once today."

"KP, this is embarrassing. I don't like being unwrapped here. Besides, the water's cold. There's likely…shrinkage."

"Okay, here." She tossed the pants to him, hitting his head with a wet 'fwap.' He quickly struggled back into them.

Kim dipped back underwater for a moment, slicking her hair back as she came back up. That's when she head the unwanted, four-note chime coming from her bracelet. The electronic 'do no disturb' sign was up on the system, and that worried her. Wade would only beep in with an emergency if it were truly dire. He tech guru was also one of the staunchest defenders of their special days, and her birthday was paramount among them.

Fighting back a surge of serious tweak, she touched the accept button. "Go, Wade."

"You guys decent?"

"We're in the lake, but we've got our suits on. At least I think we do." She shot Ron a look.

"Hey, I'm not the one pantzing her fiancé here, but I'm fine."

The inch-wide screen winked to life. "You better get back here, Kim. Somethings up, sounds bad."

"What, Dementor popping back up. GJ letting Gemini escape again."

"No, Kim. It's your apartment, there's something wrong. Like I said, you'd better get back, they're having an emergency tenants meeting in an hour."

"We're on our way." With a jerk of her head, she told Ron to come on.

They jumped in their care without bothering to dry off, Kim taking the driver's seat since she was the better high-speed driver.

She set a new record getting back to the city limits. They had done too much work, spent too much money for something to happen to their new home.

* * *

Kim Possible and all related characters © Disney 


	14. Part XIV

**_Where You Hang Your Hat: _Part XIV**

* * *

The crowd in the Middleton College auditorium was not that large, at least in comparison to the large room. At least one person from most of the fifty units were already there, clamoring for answers, answers that didn't seem to be coming fast enough to satisfy the angry tenants.

Both of them could understand that anger, mainly because they were feeling it as well. It took a tense thirty minutes to get back from the lake, putting the theory that there wasn't a cop in the tri-city area who would stop Kim Possible for speeding.

She was simultaneously concerned and furious, to the point she simply forgot that she was still in a semi-wet bathing suit and flip-flops. It didn't help that a man at the door asked them to prove they were residents at Middleton Mills, which proved to be difficult. Neither of them had been to the county police center to have their drivers licenses updated. "Look, we live in apartment fifteen in the north building. The lease is in the name of Kimberly Possible and Ronald Stoppable." It should have been simple enough to look up, but apparently these people's brains had been checked at the edge of the campus.

Her anger was already bubbling over by the time they reached the campus. The first place they went was the apartment complex itself. She wanted to run up to their room and at least throw on a t-shirt and some shorts, but she was prevented from doing even that. Two burly MPD officers blocked the main entrance, which was itself blocked by several strips of yellow police tape. They both smiled broadly as she approached.

"Kim Possible. See, Rog, I told you somebody would come to help these people."

_Help these people?_ "Uh, hi, uh, we need to go up to our apartment."

"You live here?" The officer named Rog was clearly distressed by the news.

"Sorry." The other officer said. "We can't allow anybody inside. Direct orders from Captain Hobble."

"What's going on? Everything we own is in there." Ron said, hopping on one foot, trying to get water out of his ear.

"I'm sure I don't know." The first officer said. "They called us out here and posted us here, said we couldn't let anybody inside until further notice."

"Said we were supposed to send everybody who comes in late to the auditorium over at the college." Rog explained. "Do you need directions?"

"No thank you, we're students there." Kim said a little coldly, mentally berating herself for taking her worry out on the two officers. They were only doing what they were told to do and there must be an extremely good reason for keeping everyone out of the building. There were no emergency vehicles in the lot save for the car the two officers had arrived in and there wasn't any sign of fire. The fact the building was over a century old started tickling the back of her mind, but from what she could see it was solidly built, and would likely stand for another hundred years.

It really bugged her that she couldn't at least get up to their rooms if there wasn't a pending emergency. Every stitch of clothing they owned except for the little bit they had on was up there, as well as all their new furniture…like she said, if it wasn't in her car, it was in that apartment.

Ron was almost frantic when he remembered Rufus had stayed home playing video games in their den area. If something bad had happened inside the building…

Kim tried to reassure him as best she could as they made the short drive over to the campus. At any other time they would have walked, and actually got there just as quick, but their flip-flops were designed to get from the car to their apartment, not make a quick hike from there to the school. They already had their parking sticker for the coming year, so they had access to one of the senior lots, putting them close to the building.

Inside, it seemed as if everyone was talking at once. They were grouped around a trio of representatives, one Kim recognized as being on the city council. The second she did not know, but the third was Wallace Gruber, a man who seemed to make him self scarce the moment they had signed their lease.

Another person Kim recognized was the reporter from the evening news. It was kind of strange to see one of the anchors out on a story. It only took a moment for Tricia Labowski to spot Kim. She was suddenly conscious of what she was wearing again and mentally cursed herself for not bringing a T-shirt or a cover when they left the apartment earlier that afternoon.

The African-American woman, as was her custom, shoved a microphone into Kim's face. For a moment all she could think of was that an image of her in a two-piece bathing suit was going to be beamed into just about every home in the Tri-city area by five o'clock. Her only consolation was that it was indeed more conservative than some of her other suits, but it was still a bikini.

"Kim Possible, do you have any comments on the developments at Middleton Mills?"

"Um, I'm just trying to find out what's going on."

"What is Team Possible's involvement? Have you been requested by the city to assist?"

Ron reached past Kim and pulled the microphone toward him. "No, we kinda live there."

Miss Labowski seemed to notice the young man for the first time. There was a flicker of a smile on the woman's face, though she covered it quickly before the camera could focus on her again. "So the two of you are residents at the Middleton Mills apartments?"

Kim sensed where that might go. It was not big secret that they were living together, but she didn't want the evening news dwelling on that fact. She might have been twenty-one, and Ron a week behind her, but to most people she was still just Kim Possible, Teenage Hero, and even though the tabloids had run tons of stories about their engagement (they found out one was about to break the story and sent out a pre-emptive press-release to keep the rumors under control,) a lot of people just wouldn't be able to handle the fact she had grown up and had made a lifetime commitment to a man.

"Excuse us, we really need to find out what is going on from the proper authorities." She carefully avoided saying 'finding out about our apartment,' hoping she wasn't giving them anything more to work with on that angle. Still, the damage was done, and within a week she expected to see the scandal sheets all proclaiming that the great Kim Possible was shacked up in a love nest, conveniently forgetting to mention that it was with her fiancé of three years and the partner she had always been seen with. The worst would be when they simply took Ron out of the picture and conjectured that it was some famous hottie instead. The real world Food Chain was so worse than its high school version.

The shouting was starting to get more intense. The meeting itself wasn't officially supposed to get under way for another ten minutes, but the angry tenants were not interested in waiting for that. Most of them were dressed in their daily clothing, but a couple were in bathrobes, including the young Norwegian couple who lived next door. Of the red-haired bassist, there was not sign. It was quite unusual for a meeting to be called this time of day. Obviously some of these people had been called out of work, as a couple of familiar white and green polo shirts could attest. Kim felt even worse for those people. Some bosses didn't take too kindly to having their workers called away during the day, though she was sure if the two Bueno Nacho employees worked at number five eighty-two Ned would have no problem covering for them.

"Okay people, quiet down, please!" The city-councilman got up on a folding chair, trying to get everyone's attention at once. "We need to go over a few things first before we entertain individual questions. If you will please take your seats, we will try to explain what is going on.

"We just want back in our homes!" A middle-aged woman shouted, shaking her fist at the city official.

"That's just not possible at the moment. Please, just listen for a few minutes and we will try to make this as clear as we can."

An angry murmur passed through the crowd, but they eventually all sat down, taking most of the first two rows in the middle of the auditorium. Kim and Ron found a seat in the third row, listening intently. While they were waiting for the man to begin, she felt something being pressed into her hands. It was Ron's t-shirt. She gave his hand a good squeeze, then slipped it on, a little more comfortable despite it being slightly damp.

"As some of you may be aware, the City of Middleton currently owns the property operating under the name Middleton Mills. We acquired the property when the developer defaulted on a loan the city provided to turn the historic building into affordable housing. That loan was taken out by Tri-City Properties in 1990, and one of the conditions for that loan was that they would be responsible for the inspection and upkeep of the property. We took over the property in January, under the impression that all of those conditions had been met.

"Unfortunately, it had now come to our attention that it was mismanaged ... it deteriorated. And the city was basically left holding the bag." He took a deep breath and went on. "The buildings themselves are over a century old. City staff in January conducted an on-site visual inspection of the property," the councilman said, "but they didn't do a comprehensive inspection that would have included a check for termites."

That sent a red flag up in Kim's mind. The building looked solid as a rock, built with thick layers of red bricks, but the frame itself was hardwood. Suddenly all the quaint creaks and groans of the otherwise solid seeming floor seemed a good deal scarier.

"According to city records, the buildings were stabilized in 2000 and were brought up to code. The termite problem, however, wasn't discovered until flooring in an equipment room collapsed into the basement. At first, a structural engineer who examined the damage didn't think the building needed to be evacuated, and plans were made to repair the damage. That was just a few weeks ago, and I'm sure, based on the backlog of problems that need to be addressed by the maintenance department, you can understand now why they were not available."

_So that's why they never came to fix the water heater._ Kim thought. She felt thick fingers entwine with her own, gripping her hand firmly. This was so not going to be good.

The second man stepped up and began speaking. "My name is Melville Herman. I'm the chief property inspector for the city. This morning our engineers completed an exhaustive inspection of the property, and their findings were far worse than we had imagined. Based on their recommendations, they entire property has been deemed unsafe and uninhabitable. I am afraid we have no choice but to close the apartments and relocate all residents."

Kim's jaw just about hit the floor. Three weeks they had lived there, three weeks spent turning the space from a drafty loft into their home. Three weeks spent putting up blinds, fixing small problems themselves, bringing in furniture they would be making payments on until Ron got his full trust the following summer. For the moment all she could think of was a place she had quickly fallen in love with…a place that was Ron's and her home. She replayed the morning's events in her mind, fearing that would never happen again.

"We need to get back into our homes!" Another resident pleaded. "I have medications…important papers. Everything I own is in that apartment."

"I'm sorry, but for the moment the building is just too unsafe to allow anyone back in. We have people working as fast as they can right now to try and stabilize the structure enough so we can let a limited number of people in to recover their most basic necessities, on a case-by-case basis."

Ron leaned over to Kim and whispered, "Rufus."

"I know, honey. He'll be fine. If something happens he'll get out. I'm willing to bet he's somewhere over there right now looking for us."

The room was quickly descending into bedlam as questions turned to angry accusations. Kim realized that tears were starting to run down her cheeks. She glanced at her fiancé and realized he was doing the same.

She turned and glared at Gruber, who had remained silent the whole time. Her own anger was growing as she realized this was all going on when they first approached him about the apartment. It got worse as she realized they had accepted a full-year lease, paid in advance. He had, in the city's name, accepted thousands of dollars from them, knowing full well the property was in no shape to accept new tenants.

Wacky Wally was in danger of wishing he had stayed in the weather machine business. In fact, Kim found herself wishing he had done just that. Then she would have been able to go after him in a more direct manner, since the technology had been deemed illegal. She wanted him behind bars for what she had done.

The fact the city owned the property was a surprise to her. She read the lease, front to back, but the city was never mentioned as the principal owner. Everything was in the name of "Middleton Mills Properties." She knew then that she was probably going to be spending quite some time with the family lawyer, going over the lease with a fine-tooth comb. The loss of their rent money wasn't going to break them, but there was the principal of the matter.

Eventually the officials were able to calm the residents down once more and set about the business of making arrangements. About half the tenants had family or friends they could go to, while the rest were being sent to extended stay motels until they could find a new place to live. As for them, they knew they would have a place to go to, but there still remained the fact they were standing around in slowly drying bathing suits. Ron draped a beach towel over his shoulders since he had given his shirt to her.

Since they weren't in their apartment when the building was evacuated, they were among the few who would be escorted back in to gather enough of their belongings to get by. What nobody could tell them was when of if they would be able to recover the rest of their property. They made it sound like the whole interior of the building was on the verge of collapse.

The meeting broke up, with about half the tenants leaving to take care of what they could. They found themselves in the lobby of the auditorium pacing around, waiting for word that they could go in and gather some clothes.

Kim held a piece of paper in her hands, alternately staring at it and pacing back and forth. Her whole body was tensed up. She stopped in front of Ron and stared at it again. "Twenty-five dollars. They kick us out of our home and they have the gall to give us a food voucher for twenty-five dollars! They can't do this! That's our home they're talking about. Our place! We've got a lease. That's supposed to give us a right to go there."

"KP, I know. Just calm down. We're not going to starve, and it's not like we don't have any place to go. There are two homes we're welcome in. We've got it good compared to some of these people."

"I don't care. That's our home. _OUR_ home. Our first place together and they're taking it away." She sat down on the floor, fresh tears starting to come.

Ron sat down beside her, putting his arm around her shoulder. "I think I know what will make you feel better."

"Ron, I don't think this is the right time for a dose of Ronshine, Okay?"

"No, that's not what I mean." That wasn't totally true. He was just as upset as she was and knew she needed a hug just as much as he did. "You're Kim Possible."

"Yeah, I'm Kim Possible. I can do anything, including getting kicked out of my home."

"KP," He said softly. "You help people. That's what you do, that's what you always do, no matter what it takes, you're the one who is there when people are in trouble."

She looked up into his eyes. A slightly goofy smile spread over his lips. "The way I see it, there are a lot of people here right now who need help, and it sure doesn't look like the city is going to be doing very good at that."

Kim looked at him for moment, then wrapped her arms around him, realizing what he was doing. "Enough pity fiesta, huh?"

"Yeah. Come on, Team Possible has a job to do."

"Right." She touched the call button on her wrist bracelet. "Wade? Get ready to call in some favors. Team Possible is going mission mode."

* * *

By nightfall they were allowed back into the apartment. They had spent the greater part of the afternoon working with the remaining tenants who either didn't have a place to stay or had other urgent needs to take care of. It wasn't until they were led into their rooms by one of the lead inspectors that their own sitch came rushing back to them.

For safety's sake, the power and other utilities had been cut to the building. The inspector handed out powerful hand lanterns so they could gather enough clothes to last them a few days and a few other odds and ends. Rufus, it turned out, had been sleeping in the middle of their bed the whole time, oblivious to what was going on around them. Being on the second floor, there was less danger of their own floor collapsing, being held up by the joists and extra walls that comprised the lower level.

The slightly squeaky floors were cause for concern, though their escort assured them that was normal for any wood-framed building. They just couldn't get past the notion that the floor might collapse under them at any moment. He allowed them a few minutes to go into their bedroom area and change into more appropriate clothing. Kim still felt 'lake skuzzy' but it was indeed better to be in proper underwear and jeans. They stuffed what they could into their travel bags and cast about the place for whatever else they couldn't live without. Ron went into the office and got their hand-held Kimmunicators and the laptop computer. It would be too much trouble to disconnect and remove the main desktop in the dark, and that would be pushing the time they had been allotted.

It was well after nine when they got to Kim's old house. Her room looked so empty, the bed so small after just three weeks away. Most of her old furniture was there, save her hope chest and blue chair, which were trapped over at the apartment, but the old computer was gone, as were her trophies and pictures. The nightstands sat empty until they could either recover those photos and the alarm clock.

In the short time they had been away, the room had turned completely alien to the couple. Kim sat heavily on the bed, throwing her bags down on the floor. Ron sat down beside her, putting an arm around her shoulder and pulling her close.

"Some birthday, huh?"

"Yeah. You know the worst of it?" he asked.

"What's that?"

"Your birthday present is still over there. In the rush to get our stuff together, I forgot it."

"That's okay, baby. Like that couple on TV Trash Heap say, I've got you, babe."

"Got you too, KP."

There were soft footsteps coming up the hatch. Kim's Mom appeared, shielding something with her hand. "I know we usually don't do this until both of you have had your birthdays, but anyway, Happy Birthday, Kimmie." She handed a cupcake with a single burning candle to her child.

"Thanks, Mom." She blew out the candle and unwrapped the little cake, feeding Ron a couple bites before she took a big one out for herself.

James followed his wife into the room. "I just got off the phone with Henry, our lawyer. He seems to think we can get your rent money back, since they basically broke the lease with you."

"That's good to hear. It's just so ferociously unfair for so many of those people though. We're some of the few who actually had leases. Some of them won't have anything after a few weeks."

Her father rubbed the back of his neck. "Don't know about the rest of your stuff. I just wanted to say, you're perfectly welcome here, whether it's until you find a new place, or until your house is ready. There's always a place for you here, Kimmie-cub…and you too, Ronald."

"Thanks, Dad P."

"Right now I don't know what we're going to do." She finished off the last of the cupcake, realizing that neither of them had anything to eat since their picnic at the lake.

Her parents turned to go, but Anne hesitated. "You know, it's not that late yet. Maybe it would be a good thing for the two of you to go out and get a late dinner. I'm sure you had plans to anyway."

Kim shook her head. "No, not now. I think we'll just raid the kitchen and hit the sack. I'm ferociously tired all of a sudden."

"Then sit back and rest. I'll put some plates together for the two of you."

After they ate, they took turns taking the first really hot shower they had in several weeks. It certainly seemed strange being back in that bathroom, though it was virtually identical to the one in their apartment. Part of the difference was that it had immediately been claimed by Jim and Tim, who were tired of sharing the downstairs bathroom with their cousin. The walls were still pink, but the rest had taken on a much 'manlier' look, with their dark colored towels and men's cologne scented soaps and shampoos. The presence of their electric razors and other things put their stamp on the room. That was one of the reasons they didn't feel comfortable sharing a shower as they normally did, not knowing when one of the two would burst in there.

As Kim came out of the bathroom, she saw Joss just coming in the door, still wearing her GJ uniform. The younger woman glanced coldly at her a moment, then disappeared toward her own room. When they had come in, her Mom told her that Joss had been lobbying for her old room, instead of the smaller guest room on the first floor. She knew that wasn't the only reason the teen was angry with her, but that was just something they would all have to deal with.

Ron was already sacked out on the bed, lightly dozing. Before her shower she had a short talk with her mother, and was going to take her suggestion to heart. They may have lost their home, at least temporarily, but they still had each other, and they should enjoy that to its fullest.

He started awake as she shut and locked the hatch. His eyes followed her as she locked the side door as well. They hadn't been gone so long that he didn't know that was the Possible home's version of a 'do-not-disturb' sign.

"KP?" He seemed a little confused as she took off the bathrobe and slipped under the covers with him.

"Wow, how quickly you forget how small this bed actually is." She whispered as she pulled him close. "Guess we have to snuggle closer so we don't fall off the edge."

"Sure this is what you want?"

"Oh yes. It's still my birthday for about another hour, and I want to unwrap my present again."

He smiled as he pulled her close under the covers, turning off the lights.

A little bit later she whispered "Booyah."

"Hey, that's mine." He whispered back.

* * *

It was still pitch black in the room when Kim's eyes snapped open. Ron was spooned against her back, his arm draped over her side, his hand resting in a position she once found slightly embarrassing, but had become quite welcome and pleasant. Only she couldn't enjoy it at that moment. Something was wrong, terribly wrong.

She sat up quickly in the bed, reaching for her lamp.

"KP, What's wrong?" He asked sleepily.

"Oh God, oh God no!" She hopped up out of the bed, scooping up her robe and slipping it on. No sooner did she have it tied she got out her hand-held. "Please, please still be up, Wade."

The screen on her Kimmunicator winked to life. "Kim, do you have any idea what time it is?" Wade asked, wiping sleep from his eyes. He was shirtless, which normally was a bit disconcerting to her, but she didn't even notice.

"Wade, please tell me you had our desktop networked with your system."

"Always. What's this about?"

"Whew. I thought for a moment I had lost something important."

"What's that?"

"I had my senior thesis presentation on the main computer back at our apartment."

A look of fear crossed his face. "Uh, Kim, what programs were you using to write that?"

"Mostly the word processor you wrote, plus the Presentation Point stuff. Why? Is something wrong?"

"I hate to tell you this, but those programs don't feed into the network. They just store on the hard drive itself."

"What? Wade, please look. I have to have them, they're ferociously important. I have to do my presentation Monday, and there's no way in the world I can put that back together in just four days!"

"Sorry, Kim. There's nothing on the network. I wrote those programs back when stopped keeping an online diary so you would be able to keep stuff you wrote private. That way you could trust that I wasn't snooping around in them."

"Wade, that's sweet, but I've got to have those files."

"I'm afraid there's nothing I can do. If the power was still on, I could remote access them for you, but with no electricity, that CPU is nothing more than a four-hundred gig paperweight."

Kim cut the link, crashing down on the end of the bed. "I'm doomed!"

* * *

a/n – As terrible as their housing predicament sounds, it actually happened. A complex called "Mecklenburg Mills" in the North Davidson section of Charlotte, North Carolina experienced exactly the same thing. I had some friends who lost their homes and went more than a week not knowing what would become of their property. There too, most of the tenants had no lease, pretty much leaving them out in the cold due to the mishandling by the original developers and the city. You can Google an article from "Creative Loafing" for more information.

* * *

Kim Possible and all related characters © Disney 


	15. Part XV

**_Where You Hang Your Hat: _Part XV**

* * *

Any other time Kim might have been severely tweaked with Ron. Inside of five minutes he was sound asleep once more. He already had a lot on his mind, not even counting their apartment sitch. She didn't begrudge him his sleep since he had to be up early in the morning to meet with his faculty advisors. There was also the fact he really couldn't do all that much to help her, so it was best he sleep as much as he could. Once he was past his hurdle, he could at least serve as backup for her.

There really wasn't any choice as far as she was concerned. With her presentation and all her notes cut off from her, she had just four days to recreate the whole thing from scratch, with one of those days being a Sunday, meaning both the municipal and campus libraries would be closed. At least she could remember most of her sources, and it was just a matter of getting back to them and jotting down notes. It would still be hard to write everything out again. She literally spent so much time at the keyboard her tail-bone was starting to get sore.

Not wanting to bother Ron, she put on the first clothes she grabbed out of their bags and carried the lap top up to her father's office. Normally, only he would enter his inner sanctum, but it was quite, private and had the computer connections she needed. She was exercising emergency procedures and would brook no argument. The place was relatively isolated from the rest of the house, and was fairly comfortable.

She was so intent on typing up the preliminary work she didn't notice the sun coming up through the round window, or Ron giving her a quick peck on the cheek before he left for the campus. It wasn't until her Father appeared at the door, asking what it was she was doing, that she finally took a breather.

"Well, certainly they would grant you an extension, considering your circumstances." He said after she explained the nature of her crisis.

"It's not that simple, Dad. Doctor Snyder is the chairman of the thesis committee." She said, as if that explained it all. To her it did. When she was a senior in high school, one of the professors from Middleton college had been brought in to take over the AP English class at Middleton High School. From the very first day he walked into that classroom he made it clear that he expected each and every one of them to be completely responsible for their work. There were not excuses, no exceptions. They had to have their work complete, on time, every time. If their assignments were not in his briefcase when he snapped it shut as the class ended, they got a zero. No credit, no make-up, nothing. He didn't care if their car broke down on the way to school – they were responsible for ensuring their transportation was reliable. He didn't care if they got sick – they were responsible for keeping themselves healthy. There simply was nothing else save to have their work done on time.

She had come to respect the man very deeply. He was massively intelligent and he both respected and fostered that in his students. He wasn't out to make friends, he was out to mold minds, and he managed to do that by driving them harder than anyone ever had before. They were part of the academic elite at the high school level – being given college credit for their work. He demanded college level work from them, scrawling Cs and Ds on papers that previously would have been marked A plus, plus, plus.

He was right about his students, however. Not a one of them graduated that spring with less than an A in his class, and they all felt it was one of the greatest accomplishments of their young lives.

Feeling confident, Kim signed up for his two-semester Advanced Comparative Literature course her Junior year. It was supposed to be a Senior level class, but Doctor Snyder allowed her to take it. If she thought the course in High School had been tough…

"I'm sure he saw the news. We did too, though I've got to admit, they certainly did manage to show quite a lot of you. Why, they even used that picture of you in your…"

"Daddy! It doesn't matter if I was on the news. Doctor Snyder does not allow anything to be done late. I'm supposed to make my presentation Monday morning, and it I don't, I will either get stuck doing something the committee dreams up for me, or I'll have to wait until next semester to start my project, which will put me half a year late graduating. That means I won't get to graduate with Ron."

That alone said it all. Over three years of college she had only managed to have two classes together with him. The rest of the time they might as well have been going to two different schools. They had spent the better part of their lives together and even if they hadn't gotten together romantically they wanted to go to school together. They had done a lot of work to get Ron into there and they wanted to finish together, even though Kim would be diving straight into graduate school, while Ron would be heading into the work force finally.

"Well, good luck then. Are you sure you don't want to use my system instead of that little lap-top?"

"Ferociously sure, Dad, but thanks anyway. I'm not going to let this thing out of my sight, and even then I'm going to back my work up on the flash-drive." She stopped and looked around for a moment. She had a pile of paperwork on the desk and her book bag was sitting beside the chair. She spent a few minutes looking though the pile, then the bag itself. "Oh, come on, where is it?"

"What are you looking for, Kimmie-cub?"

"My flash-drive. It was supposed to be in here. Oh man! Not that too." She got up and ran down the steps into her room, throwing her bags on the crisply made bed. He father followed her down, standing in the doorway.

"Where's all my stuff?" She shook the empty bag over the bed, then grabbed one of Ron's, doing the same."

"Whoa there, Kimmie-cub. Your mother was up early and she put away all of your things."

Jumping to the nightstand she started going through drawers. There wasn't much in there, only the small jewelry box where she kept her birth control pills and a few scattered pieces of jewelry. Moments later she was at the chest-of-drawers, randomly pulling clothes out and throwing them on the floor."

"I've got a couple flash-drives of my own, if you need to borrow them."

She sat down on the bed, slumping her shoulders. "It was a special one Wade made for us. It was designed to hold two hundred gigs of data instead of just twenty like a commercial version. It was supposed to be in my backpack. Oh damn, I bet it's sitting on the desk back at the apartment."

"Have you considered calling the people over there? Maybe they can let you back in to recover the tower. Then we could hook it up here and then you can just relax over the weekend."

She shook her head sadly. "No, Dad, they made it clear they weren't going to let anybody else in there. We got what we thought was important, and after that they'll just arrest us for trespassing."

"Maybe Ron could send Rufus in to remove the hard drive. I've seen him program the DVR before."

"I'm so not going to chance that. For one thing, that will be breaking the law. More importantly, Wade built that tower for us. It's got some…security features. If he made one mistake he'd be fried." She got up and headed back toward the office. "Crap, I'm just going to have to do what I can and hope for the best. They're probably going to think I'm throwing a load of garbage at them."

"Well, don't panic, Kimmie-cub. You know what I always say."

"Dad, I know, 'anything's possible for a Possible.' There's just too much work to be done." She sat back down at the computer. "I'm not panicking, but it took me three weeks to put all that together, working almost non-stop. I wouldn't even have taken a break yesterday if I wasn't confident that it was finished."

She wasn't even aware when her father left her alone to do her work. She just kept at it, accessing websites from memory, hunting down quotes and passages she had already referenced. Part of that was made harder by the fact she had done that kind of work on the desktop, meaning none of the sites were in the smaller portable's history file. What she thought would be easy, having already done it once before, was proving frustrating. Even the best search engines couldn't take her directly to where she wanted to go and the Wi-Fi connection was interminably slow compared to the dedicated line the big system used. She seriously wished Wade would hurry up with the real-time satellite hookup he had been promising.

"Karma's a bitch, ain't it." Came a voice from behind her.

"I so do not have time for this right now, Joss." She glanced at her cousin, who was standing in the doorway in her sleepwear, munching on a bowl of cereal. Kim checked her watch. It was only about eight-thirty. She had been sitting at that computer since about three in the morning and had neither eaten, nor had she had any coffee. She was running on pure adrenaline, and soon that would run out.

"Serves you right, getting kicked out of that place."

She turned around, fixing the teen with an angry glare. "Just what is that supposed to mean?"

"All I asked you to do was to let me crash there a couple nights. I wasn't going to bring the guy I'm seeing over, I just needed some time to cool off. Instead, all you could think about was being alone with Ron."

"Look, I said I don't have time to go into this with you. The apartment complex being closed has nothing to do with the fact I'm not going behind my father's back for you. Plus, I'm sorry if you wanted my old room. Thought you were happy when you got the first floor room anyway."

"I thought the two a you woulda been stayin here anyway. Instead I get here and yer off ta yer own little place, leavin me to play substitute Kim with your Daddy. That wasn't fair."

"Joss, come Monday, one way or the other this is all going to be behind me, then the two of us can sit down and have a heart-to-heart about all of this. Maybe we might even go stay over at Ron's house for a little while, until this mess is straightened out, but in the mean time I've got more work to do than I ever had to before and I don't have time to sit and go over things neither of us can control. Aren't you supposed to be getting ready for today's session anyway?"

"Day off. Gonna head to the lake with Bobby for the day, unless your Daddy doesn't think I'm supposed to even see him."

"Joss, enough about Dad, okay? He's not out to keep you from having a boyfriend. A curfew isn't supposed to stop you from dating, it's supposed to keep you safe and to impose a little discipline."

"I don't need that kind of discipline. I'm a grown…"

"Joss, don't say that again!" She spun around hand held up her index finger. "Seventeen is so not a grown woman. Yeah, I thought I was then. I thought I was when I turned eighteen, and there for a while I got it in my head that reaching that age was about nothing more than what I could do with Ron. You know what? All that stuff almost ended up coming between us. I started forgetting that it was more important to be in love with him than to be with him. I got where all I wanted was that stuff we started doing after we thought we were 'adults.'"

"I though you told me that started last winter?"

"_That_ did, but there were other things we did, other things that I didn't want Daddy to know about. Joss, I'm twenty-one now and I know for a fact I've still got a lot of growing up to do. If I didn't maybe I'd go ahead and marry Ron. All I can say is trust us. Just listen to what you're saying. I don't even know who this 'Bobby' is, and I'm willing to bet Mom and Dad don't either. Dad trusted Ron because he knew him. I know you won't be able to have somebody he knows as well as Ron, but you have to trust and respect him before he's going to do the same for you. Now, really, I do have a lot to do and I don't have time for this, so please, go to the lake with this guy and just wait for a bit."

"You were a lot more fun when you were just into boys _sometimes_." Joss griped as she turned to go.

_Yes, and you were a lot easier to deal with when you were twelve,_ Joss, Kim thought to herself as she watched the younger woman go. Twelve, innocent, full of adventure…before puberty and all that crud that went with it set in.

Shaking her head to clear it, she tried to focus on her work once more. The little clock in the corner seemed to jump from nine, to ten, to eleven without her realizing the time was going by. It almost made her think it was broken like the old-fashioned clock in room twelve back at Middleton High School. Vaguely she recalled her mother coming up a couple times to bring her a breakfast sandwich and a large travel mug full of strong coffee. That was long gone and she was wishing for some more, but was unwilling to take the time to go downstairs and get any more.

All of a sudden she stopped and rubbed her eyes. Plowing straight through without any kind of break simply was not going to work. With only a couple hours of good sleep, the weight of their apartment sitch hanging over her, a bladder that was starting to scream at her and an emptiness in the pit of her stomach, she was starting to have a very hard time concentrating. On top of that, she could tell that she really needed another shower. She was still a human being and she wasn't capable of going ninety-plus hours straight, no matter how urgent the work was. Even her mother only had to pull thirty-six hour shifts on occasion, and that had pretty much tapered off as she attained higher positions in the Medical Center Hierarchy. As head of the Neurology department, she reported only to the Chief of Medicine.

She looked up when a pair of warm hands came to rest on her shoulders. "Wow, déjà vu all over again." Ron said as he worked his magic on her tense muscles.

"She put one of her hands on his and brushed her cheek up against it. "How's that, baby?"

"You look just like you did back in high school when you were putting term papers together. Well, maybe except your hair is longer, but look at you. When was the last time you dressed like that?"

For perhaps the first time she considered what she had grabbed from their bags. It had been dark and she simply slipped on the first things her hand closed around. The lime-green top was a little faded, as were the old periwinkle capris, but she did indeed look like she had stepped back in time to their sophomore year of high school, when she had worn that outfit almost every single day, including the better part of winter.

"I didn't have bags under my eyes then either." She said. "Oh, I wish I had time to enjoy that properly."

"What's the big emergency anyway? One minute you were sound asleep, next you were running up here."

She turned and looked at him. "You don't know?"

"All I know is you started pestering Wade about something, then went into full mission mode. I didn't wake up fast enough to know what the two of you were talking about."

Kim actually laughed. They were usually so in sync with each other they sometimes forgot to fill in the details. He was rightfully focused on his own responsibilities that day, and having completed them, was there for her. Closing her eyes for a moment again, she got up and stretched, then gave him a tight hug before explaining the breadth of her crisis.

"Hey, maybe Rufus…"

"No, Daddy already suggested that. It's too dangerous, and not only that, it's illegal."

"I just can't believe you didn't back it up on the network."

"Nope. I didn't know I had to. Wade wrote those programs so I'd have some privacy. He didn't know I pretty much stopped keeping a dairy after we got together."

"Wait a sec, hold on." He dug down into his pocket, extracting a tiny blue device. "You know that night you fussed at me for coming to bed so late?"

"Yeah. I thought you got all that internet gaming stuff out of your system after you and Zita didn't work out."

"Well…not entirely. I was chatting with your cousin Larry and he invited me to play some Fortress V, so I said okay. Can't help it if that stuff is addicting."

"Okay, so you'd rather battle some cyber-beast some nights than come to bed with me." She smiled at him, hiding a mild bit of tweak about the issue. She was still 'celebrating her womanhood' at that point, but she still wanted to cuddle.

"The point is, KP, you'd pretty much finished everything by that point."

"Yeah. On the big computer. I was planning to transfer it to the laptop, but I guess your procrastination rubbed off on me and I didn't get around to it in time."

"Well, after we finished our game, Larry told me I needed to back up where I was, so I put this in the USB port and hit the backup icon."

"Lovely. So now you can go back to playing your game when I'm done with the computer. Woo hoo, extra hoo." She said dryly.

"See, here's the good part, Kim. It was taking longer than I thought, so I asked Larry what was going on. He said that I must have told the computer to backup everything, instead of just the game info."

Kim's eyes got huge. "Hold on. You're telling me you backed a whole four hundred gig hard drive onto that little thing?"

"Not that hard. I know this thingy is only a quarter of the size, but we're not big on keeping lots of pictures or movies or even music on it since we can stream all of that from Wade's network. We only had about forty gigs taken up. It's all here, the whole shoot-n-match as of that night."

Trembling, she took the flash drive from his hand and plugged it into the computer.

"It's here! It's all here! My notes, the bibliography, the report, the video presentation! Ron! Do you know what this means?"

"Uh, I did good?"

She grabbed him, crushing him in her arms. "Yes, you did good, Ronnie. It means I'm going to take you down to our room, lock the doors and not give a hoot who in this house hears us. It means I'm marrying the most wonderful, smartest, best man on the planet." She mashed her face up against his, not caring that she must taste like all-night breath topped off with stale coffee.

Ron finally had to come up for air. "Babe, I think we might need to take a rain-check on that."

"Oh?" She pouted. "Doesn't Wonnie want his weward?"

He smiled at her, kneading the small of her back as she leaned against him. "Yeah, but first you're going to go down to that room, get back into your pajamas and you're going to get the sleep you missed out on last night. KP, and I mean this in the most loving way, you look like hell."

She glanced over at the glass doors of the book case, looking at her reflection. Her hair was frazzled and her eyes were almost completely bloodshot. "Yeah, guess you're right, honey, but you know how I sleep the best?"

"How's that?"

"When I've got my Cuddlebuddy to hold."

He gritted his teeth. "Oooo, oh no. I think we left Pandaroo over at the apartment."

"Not the Cuddlebuddy I was talking about." She said, burying her face in his chest.

* * *

a/n – once again I have to give credit where it's due. The whole Thesis Presentation sitch idea came from a chat with CaptainKodak1. Don't forget to catch his current fic, **Tunnel Vision.**

* * *

Kim Possible and all related characters © Disney 


	16. Part XVI

**_Where You Hang Your Hat: _Part XVI**

* * *

"Anne, have you seen the kids?"

She looked up from the vegetables she was cutting as her husband wandered into the kitchen, his tie partially undone and a newspaper half folded in his hand.

"Which ones? The love-birds, the boys or sour puss?"

"Oh, so you've noticed it too?"

She put her knife down and wiped her hands on her apron. "Well, if you noticed it, I sure would have?"

James sat down at the table and buried his face in the paper. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means, dear, you have a tendency to be slightly oblivious, and since Kim and Ron have been lovebirds for over four years, the boys have always been boys, it stands to reason you would be referring to Jocelyn."

"Well, I'm just kind of surprised there's nobody in the house but us."

"That's because Kim and Ron are over at Roy's office going over their lease. The boys got dragged to the mall by their girlfriends and Jocelyn left for an early date with that Bobby guy."

James looked around his paper, scowling. "Monday nights are not exactly date nights in my book."

"They are until school starts in three weeks. Ease up on the poor girl, James. That's part of why she has been in such a foul mood since she got here."

"Well I don't trust this guy. Did he bother coming inside to introduce himself this time?"

"No. Joss just headed out the door wearing her red dress saying she was getting an early start of it so they would have enough time before curfew."

"Enough time for what?" James asked coldly.

"Enough time to get some dinner and go to a movie or go out dancing. Really, James, she's seventeen. You have to trust her to some extent."

"Anne, it's just…Slim sent her here because he didn't think he could be strict enough with her, and I don't want to screw up by letting all the same things happen here."

She leaned on the counter, facing her husband. "So what are you going to do? Forbid her from dating? Lock her up in the house when she's not at training? Don't forget, when Kim was that age, you let her take an overnight train trip to Go City on Valentines day."

"That was completely different. We're talking about Ron and Kim. When he asked me if they could do that, I knew deep in my heart I could trust him. Joss is a completely different person."

"Wow, you actually realized that?"

He put his paper down and shook his head. "Just because I can sometimes be an absent-minded rocket scientist, that doesn't mean I'm stupid when it comes to my own family. The fact of the matter is I don't even know if this guy she is seeing is a blonde or a brunette, has tattoos or not, wears a nice sports jacket or leather and chains. I know nothing about him and I feel like I'm being remiss as her uncle and defacto guardian by not knowing these things."

"Then you sit down and tell her, she's not going out with a guy unless he has the decency to come inside and at least introduce himself. Honey, you were spoiled by Kim and later by Jim and Tim. Even though you've known him since he was a toddler, Ron still knew he was supposed to come inside to pick up Kim for their dates, and the boys knew they should bring their dates by to meet us because of his example. Joss is an only child being raised by a single parent. She doesn't know these things. All she knows is what she sees with her friends and what little bit she has seen from a distance about our kids."

"Yes, but I'm just afraid that if I were to say something to her about that, all she'll do is shut me down for being a square."

"James, you know better than that. We're not here to play popularity contests with the kids. If you've got to lay down the law, then do it. It's not like you're forbidding her from going out, it just means you're insisting that her dates behave like proper gentlemen. Don't you remember how much fun you had tormenting poor Ronald with the black hole deep threats?"

"Those were the days, alright. Sure had that boy about to…"

"He was not. That whole thing lasted, what, two dates before he figured out you didn't mean it?"

"Ron sure thought I meant it when I said if he ever did anything to hurt Kimmie I would be the worst son-of-a-bitch in the universe."

"Then do the same thing with Joss. I think it's looking more and more like I need to have a long sit down with her as it is, but you know that when I start talking about these things, my doctor's hat tends to slip onto my head and things get a little mechanical in nature. That's the way it was with Kim. I'm sure if it had not been for you, she might have been somewhat freer with the boys at a much younger age, and if that had happened, there is every possibility that she would not be with Ronald today."

"Just feels kind of funny to have to say all that over again. Kimmie was, what? Fifteen when she started dating for real?"

"If you call school dances a date. She went out with Ron more the first few weeks than she had all her other dates combined, which really isn't normal until you consider Ron took up that place in her life, though they didn't call it dating."

"Speaking of them, you said they were over at Roy's office? I thought Kimmie had that presentation today."

Anne practically beamed. "She did. It went off without a hitch and she got the go-ahead for her thesis."

"Fan-tastic. At least that's some good news in their life. Such a shame what's happening with their apartment. Has there been any news on that front?"

"Not so much. They're still trying to find a moving company who will agree to go in there and pack things up for everybody, though I'm sure the insurance companies are pitching a fit over that. They still won't let anybody in to get anything else, though there is now an independent engineer who says the buildings are actually safe."

"Then why won't they let anybody in?"

"Because once the city engineer pushed the panic button, the city was legally obliged to do what they did. It would take a court order at this point to reverse that decision, and nobody that lived in that complex has the money to force the issue. They best anybody can hope for now is to recover their property and move on."

"That still really grinds my beans." He clenched his fists over the table. "Imagine what that would have been like if that happened in that apartment we moved into when we got married."

She rolled her eyes. "I would have cheered. You know I hated that place, James."

"You only hated it because we never really did anything with the place since we were waiting for this to be built."

"Same thing with the kids."

"Yes, but Kimmie just wasn't going to stand for that. Their place really looked like a home there, at least for a few days."

"Well, they can find another place and do it all again. It's not like they got all that settled in. It hurts right now, but with only three weeks under their belt, it will fade."

He folded the paper up and set it aside, having already read it cover to cover that morning. "Personally, I would just as soon have Kim and Ron stay here until they get married now. That way they will have a stable place to live up to that point, without having to deal with noisy neighbors or termites or hot water heaters that don't work."

Anne shook her head. "I really think it's too late for that now. We've all already been through the emotional rollercoaster of them moving out. They've gone from living here to feeling like they're guests, and you should hear the rest of the kids. Jim and Tim are griping about sharing a bathroom, and Joss has already laid claim to the one downstairs and won't let them in it any more."

"But they're not guests. They're out kids, Anne."

She tapped herself on the head. "We know that up here, but down here." Her finger moved to the middle of her chest. "The change has happened, and I don't think it can ever really be undone. Kim and Ron have grown up and moved on. We came to terms with that already, and it's not fair to them, or to the younger kids to make their current situation more than temporary. They're going to go out looking again just as quick as the rent situation is resolved."

"They damned well better be getting that money back." He groused, lightly pounding a fist on the table.

"I don't see why they wouldn't. Roy is pretty confident they'll get the majority, if not all of it back"

His teeth were clenching. Every time they discussed it his frustration built until he was ready to bite nails. The worst of it was that they couldn't do anything besides open their home back up to the couple.

"It just pushes my peeve button so hard that all that had to happen on Kimmie-cub's birthday, and her twenty-first, no less."

"That's just Kimmie for you. She's spent her fair share of birthdays off doing something else. Seventeenth spent down in the Caribbean. Nineteenth off somewhere in South America, twentieth chasing after that Demens fellow. At least this time she got to stay here and she got to spend some quality time with Ronald."

"You know, Ronald's birthday is Wednesday." He was slowly calming down. "Maybe we could call some of their friends in for a big get-together."

"Careful what you wish for, dear. You remember what happened when they thought just a few of their friends were coming over that one evening after they graduated."

"I think I would have a little better control over who was coming."

"That's what Kim thought, and still the house was full of people, and the fridge out in the garage got emptied."

"Grrrrrrrr, if that Mankey boy only knew how much that lager costs."

"Settle down, James. He's the Matthew's problem now. Personally, I don't think that would be workable anyhow. They've been drifting away from their old friends for some time and I don't think they've ever gotten as close to anyone at college. There's another reason for them to have their own place. It will allow them to socialize with their friends more, plus, they will never admit this, but I don't think they feel it's very cool for them to be living 'at home' like this."

"Point taken. So, what are we going to do for them?"

"Well, unless they have private plans Wednesday night, I think the entire family, Jocelyn and the boys included, should go out to dinner for both their birthdays. What's that really nice Italian restaurant out by the mall?"

"_Mandola's_? I guess that would be nice, though I'm sure the waiters would all run and hide if they saw the twins coming."

"Now James, Jim and Tim are a lot more grown up than that. It's not like we're taking them to _JP Bearymore's_."

James winced. His leg still ached from time to time, especially when it was cold and raining out. "That sounds like a plan. What's more, I think we'll get one of the boys to drive. That way both Kim and Ron can enjoy being twenty-one. We can all share a pitcher of Italian Sangria."

"There you go." She turned her attention back to her cooking. Yes, it would be a good plan, if they could get to all the kids in time.

* * *

Joss looked out the window of the small pickup, wondering exactly what it was she had gotten into. In the few weeks she had been in Middleton, she had yet to learn her way around that well. The little town near the ranch she had grown up on was little more than a sleepy main street. Even that was fading fast, since the Smarty Mart out by the highway was becoming pretty well entrenched by that point. Most of the storefronts were empty by then, with only the few who were able to hang onto the slow but steady stream of tourists coming to stay at The Crooked D were still able to make ends meet. The hardware store was gone, as was the old hunting store and even the old, tiny grocery had closed its doors because of the onslaught of the massive discounter. The formula worked just like it did everywhere else the big box opened. Most of the people in the sparsely populated former frontier town were relatively poor, and simple economics sent them where they could buy the cheapest. Only the fact that most of the work-force tended the ranches around there kept the local economy afloat.

"Bobby, where exactly are we, anyway?"

Her date was not especially tall, nor was he muscular. In fact, he wasn't exactly the greatest specimen of teenaged manhood the Tri-City had to offer. Yet he appealed to her. He had dark blonde hair, brown eyes and was prone to slightly goofy expressions. It never occurred to her that he vaguely resembled Ron Stoppable.

He parked his truck and set the brake. "It's called Logging Camp Road."

"Um, what exactly is the point?" She looked around at the other vehicles parked there. The road simply ended there on a bluff overlooking the part of town where she was living. The lights of the Middleton Mall dominated the visible landscape, though if it were daylight out she thought she might be able to see the Possible abode.

"Heh. I guess in the old days, they'd call this 'the point.' It's just a nice, quiet place to park for a while." Without a warning, he put his hand behind her head and pulled her in for a kiss.

She pulled away after a couple moments. "Hey, slow down, Bobby."

"Sorry. Thought that's what you wanted. We could still go to that dance club."

"No…no. It's too close to Middleton College. I'm afraid we might run into my cousin there. She likes going out dancing with her fiancé."

"Okay. Don't you want to make out or something?"

She blushed, though it was impossible to see her do so. She had been thinking about the moment for the last several days, daydreaming about kissing her new beau, but there, sitting in his truck, at what apparently was the big make-out place of Middleton, she was having second thoughts.

He took her hand, gently squeezing it. He was a rising senior at Middleton High, just like her, and actually the youngest guy she had ever gone out with, though he was still a month older than she was. His hand was a little rough, considering he worked at a local garage, but his touch was gentle.

"Maybe we should have just gone to a movie." She suggested, returning the squeeze.

"It's a bit too late. Don't I have to have you home by ten? It's eight forty-five now."

"You're right. Okay, just a little kiss." She puckered up, wrapping one hand behind his neck. It certainly did feel nice. She had already gone out with him twice, not counting an afternoon spent out at the lake and she did really like him. She wanted to kiss him that first night, but considering her history, she wanted to go a little slower. Mistakes had been made in the past she didn't want to make again.

As nice as the kiss was, as good as it seemed to feel, she couldn't help but feel nervous about the situation. About a month before her father sent her to live with her Aunt and Uncle, she had been in an almost identical situation. Only then she had been in a larger, king-cab style pickup with a nineteen year-old hand who worked at a neighboring ranch. They were on a remote part of the Lazy C, where they thought they could have some privacy.

That morning she had a long, rather loud fight with her father, mostly about her boyfriend. It ended with her storming out of the house and driving her own small pickup to his place. That evening had started with kissing, but quickly went further…

…much further.

Then she had been willing. So was the guy. In fact, he was more than willing, though, halfway through the process she realized that she was doing it more because she wanted to get back at her father than the fact she was really ready to give up her innocence. Even though tears were running down her face, she was afraid to put a stop to it. The point of no return had already been passed.

The worst of it came when the pickup's door was suddenly wrenched open and her boyfriend was dragged out of the truck. There were a couple sharp cracks as fists connected with his chin. The next thing she knew, her father's enraged face was in the doorway, screaming at her to put her dress back on.

The night ended with her pleading with her father not to press charges against the boy. He reluctantly agreed, but only if she would agree to go live with her cousins and their parents for a while.

"Stop." She said suddenly, putting a hand up between herself and Bobby.

"What's the matter?" He kept his hands on her waist, kneading.

"Please, let's go do something else. I'm not com…"

He cut her off, mashing his face against hers. He kissed her on her mouth, moving down to her neck, slowly pushing her down on the bench seat of his truck.

* * *

Kim was sitting in the family room, quietly paging through one of her fashion magazines as yet another _Fearless Ferret_ marathon played out on the TV. The sound was turned low, since she really wasn't paying all that much attention to it. The satellite listings said episode fourteen, That _Stinking Feeling_ would be coming up shortly, and she didn't want to miss it. The show had terrible production values, even for the sixties, but Rudolph Farnsworth, the man who played the villain _White Stripe_, had passed away earlier that year and she felt she owed it to him a little to catch it whenever it was on.

Ron was going to be tweaked that he missed it, but it was his idea to have a 'guy's night out' with Paul and some of their other friends. Her parents had gone to a movie themselves and she had no idea where the Tweebs were, so she decided to spend some nice quality time alone. It wasn't until that had gone on two hours and she had accomplished absolutely nothing in that time save reading the same magazines over and over that she realized she just wasn't used to spending her time by herself. She liked and needed human contact.

Her mind was much more at ease than it had been over the last few days. The family lawyer, Roy Epps, was completely confident they could get their rent back without going to court over it. That in itself was pleasant enough news. With her Thesis proposal accepted, there was nothing left to do but enjoy her remaining weeks before school started. Well, not nothing. They still needed to find a new apartment. Even though there were rival engineers saying the building could be saved, there was no way she was going to live in that place again. It was a nice apartment, but she knew she could never have real peace of mind thinking it could collapse at any time. She also had serious doubts the building would survive.

That also left the issue of their belongings. She had gone to the thesis board that morning wearing a dress she borrowed from her mother. They clothes they brought with them were more of the practical variety. The rest were still hanging in their wardrobe, along with a great deal of other things she wanted back, not the least of which was her beloved Pandaroo. Even if they did find a new apartment, they were going to have a tough go of it without their furniture. It was looking more and more like she would have to borrow what little furniture was left in her room, or perhaps some of Ron's from his house.

That would be interesting as well. His parents had already returned the larger full bed to the guest room, putting his tiny twin bed back in its place, taking the room back to how it looked for most of his life, save there were no longer any toys strewn about the shelves, and all the stickers had been peeled off the mirror of his chest-of-drawers.

Getting a new apartment really was a foregone conclusion. Sure, she was welcome to stay in her former home as long as she needed to, but all the reasons they had for moving out still applied. She had started a life together with Ron and the longer she was a guest in her parent's house, the longer that new life was being put on hold.

Still, she was able to relax a little bit. She was actually looking forward to a big family dinner out on Ron's birthday, especially the chance to get a little out of control with him afterwards. The two times she had been drunk before, he was the consummate gentleman, never once thinking of taking advantage of her. It wouldn't be taking advantage if that was what she wanted. She didn't want to be actually drunk, knowing how she felt the morning after, but she did want to get slightly tipsy.

The thoughts of the upcoming evening were playing in her head when she head the Kimmunicator go off. Sighing, she put the magazine down and went hunting for it. Since she was in the house for the evening, she wasn't wearing her bulky bracelet version. Fortunately, the doors were all open, so she could hear it two floors above her.

She punched the accept button. "What's the sitch, Wade?"

The screen didn't wink to life as usual. That's when she noticed the indicator said the call was coming from another Kimmunicator unit, not from Wade's master panel. The signal was audio only and she noticed it was coming from Joss' unit. Cold fear gripped her as she realized it had been the emergency tone.

"Kim?"

"Joss, what's wrong."

"Kim, please, can you come out to get me?"

"Joss, honey, what's wrong?"

"Please, just come get me. I'm out at some place called Logging Camp Road."

She grabbed her purse and dashed down the stairs to the garage. She knew full well where and what that place was, having been there many, many times with Ron.

The cold fear wouldn't leave her. She heard what was in her cousin's voice and she knew not every guy was a perfect gentleman like Ron. "I'll be there in a few, just hang on."

* * *

Kim Possible and all related characters © Disney 


	17. Part XVII

**_Where You Hang Your Hat: _Part XVII**

* * *

Kim pulled her cruiser onto the grass, not quite driving all the way to the edge of the bluff like so many others did. She had no idea what kind of vehicle Joss had come to the make-out point in and it was fairly dark out, so she pulled a small tactical flashlight out of her purse and set out to find her cousin.

It didn't take her long to figure out where she was. The place was usually dead silent save for the occasional sound of another car arriving and the night insect, but the pleading voice of a young man reached her before she was halfway there.

Joss was pacing back and forth, not far from the small stand of boulders where they had come on their first prom night some years earlier. It was the only real landmark at the place, so it was easy to see why she had gravitated there.

Her heart soared a little. The tone of her cousin's voice suggested something far worse had happened. At any rate, it must have been bad enough. Every so often she would face the boy and hurl invectives his direction, sometimes in English, sometimes in the pigeon Spanish she had picked up during her early childhood in Texas.

"Listen, Joss, I said I was sorry. Would you please get back in the truck."

"No. Kim will be here any minute. Just get back in that piece of crap and go."

"I'm not leaving you here alone. I was stupid, that's all. I really, really like you and I respect you…"

"That ain't respect! Didn't yer momma ever teach you that when a chica says no, it don't mean to keep pawin on her like she said yes?"

"How many times to I have to say I'm sorry. I just thought…"

"You didn't think, Bobby. At least you didn't think with your head. Now just get in that ugly little truck of yours and go home. I'll see you when school starts."

"I already told you, there's no way I'm leaving you here in a place like this alone."

"Wow." Kim said softly as she came up behind the boy. "Sounds like the first gentlemanly thing you've done all night. Now I suggest you get in your car and drive home before I show you just how ugly Possible women can get." He never raised her voice once, but she shot him a glare that was visible even in the low light.

He started to say something, then caught the look in Kim's eyes. Without another word, he run to the little Toyota and started it, backing out even before he got his headlights turned on.

Moments later, the same young lady who had not spoken five words to her over the whole weekend had her arms wrapped tightly around her, crying freely.

Kim finally made her let go. "Joss, are you okay?"

She nodded, wiping her nose with her forearm. "Yeah." She said weakly.

"Are you absolutely certain? You sounded frantic when you called." She couldn't believe that had only been about seven minutes earlier. It seemed more like an hour as she frantically burned rubber up the old, barely paved road. "Did he do anything to you? Did he hurt you?"

"He…he…" She buried her face in her hands, trying to catch her breath.

"It's okay, Joss. Take your time. Did…he…hurt…you?"

She finally shook her head. Kim just couldn't reconcile the depth of the girl's emotions, wondering if she had made a mistake sending the boy away so quickly. She decided that she hadn't. If he had done something, she might not have been able to control herself and there would be more than one person in trouble that night.

Instead of trying to question Joss, she gently put her arm around her shoulder and led her back to her car. The tissue box was empty, so she fished a fresh beach towel out of the back seat and gave it to the teen.

"Okay, Joss. I'm driving you to the Medical Center."

"No!" She put her hand on Kim's which was about to put the small car into gear.

"Joss! If he…we need to go there right now!"

"No! He didn't do a single thing that I need to go there about. I swear. Kim, you have to believe me."

"Joss, I can hardly believe you're this upset if he didn't lay a hand on you. Look, either you tell me exactly what he did, or I'm going there even if I have to zip-tie your wrists to do it. You understand?"

The young Montanan spent a few minutes sobbing, burying her face in the towel from time to time, moving it around to find dry spots. Finally, she dropped the terry cloth to her lap and leaned back on the seat, staring out the windshield.

"All he really did was kiss me…well, that and he put his hand on my ass."

"There is no way just kissing is going to cause this."

"No! I'm not goin to the hospital. I'm fine, I swear."

"No, Joss, you're not fine. You're a wreck."

"He just kept kissing me. Then he grabbed my butt an I told him ta stop, but he wouldn't. He jes kept on kissin me and kissin…"

"…and he didn't stop there, did he?" Kim finished for her.

"Yeah, he did. Kim, I'm not that kinda girl. I don't know what you might think a me."

"If all he did was kiss you, why are you blubbering like this?"

"Cause a the way it made me feel. It ain't right. It jes ain't right." Sorrow suddenly turned to anger and she punched the dashboard. If it wasn't made of advanced composites to protect the delicate computers inside, it likely would have split.

"And all he did was kiss you and grope you a little? Really, honey, this isn't jibing with what your Dad said when you came here. Look, I'm at least calling Mom."

"NO! Don't you understand?"

"I understand plenty. I've dealt with something like this in the past myself."

"I just don't want Bobby getting in trouble for anything."

Kim closed her eyes for a moment. She was flailing around in the dark. The thing who nearly violated her was an insane criminal. It was easy to blame him from what happened to her. "Look, if he's done something, you shouldn't…you can't protect him."

"It's not his fault…not his fault." Her voice trailed off.

"Well, it's not yours. You're the one who said no…"

"Dammit, Kim! He didn't rape me, for God's sake. He didn't even touch me under my dress. I told him no because of the way he was makin me feel back there." She buried her face in her hands, sobbing anew.

Kim put the car in drive, but pulled out slowly. She didn't turn back towards town, but drove out into the countryside. She wanted to make it clear to the distraught teen she wasn't taking her anywhere against her will, but she knew she needed to put some distance between them and the bluff.

As the car wound down the two lane road that would eventually take them to the outskirts of North Lowerton, Joss started speaking. She slowly, carefully explained what had happened between her and her ex-boyfriend back in Montana. She kept it as succinct and clinical as she could, but left out none of the important details.

"…So when I thought Bobby wasn't stopping, I freaked out. I couldn't see him any more, I could just see the other guy. See, that's why I'm sayin I don't want to get Bobby in trouble. He really, really didn't do nothin wrong."

"Yes he did. He didn't respect you enough when you said no. You did the right thing getting out of the truck and away from him. If everything you're telling me is the truth, I think you're right about not going to the Medical Center. He needs to be dealt with, but in a calm way, an adult way. I think the best thing is for Mom and Dad to sit down with his parents and deal with this. I may be wrong, but I think it's best."

"I just don't want him in trouble."

"It's too late for that, I think, but for right now, I'm going to let it sit. Joss, I want you to swear to me that you're telling me the truth. If you're not, it's you who're going to be hurting. You understand?"

"Yeah. I do, and I swear on my momma's grave that's all he did."

"Okay. I trust you. Honey, I'm not giving you a hard time or anything, it's because I love you. We all love you, that's the only reason Daddy and Uncle Slim treat you the way they do. Now, do you trust me?"

"Yeah. Don't know how you can trust me the way I've been treatin you the last bit."

"Joss, I…I understand what you're going through, what being your age is like. Trust me, it wasn't that long ago. You think you're a grown woman, but tonight really should hammer home to you that you're not. You've got your body screaming at you twenty-four/seven that you're one thing, while your mind is saying something completely different.

"And yes, I understand why you thought you needed to get away from Daddy last week. It wasn't all that long ago I ended up doing the same thing. When he first suggested Ron and I should look for our own place to hang our hat, I took it all the wrong way, and we ended up spending the night at Ron's house instead of mine. I'll be the first to admit it, I'm the world's biggest hypocrite. It's just, the only thing I could see by letting you stay with us was that it was going against Dad. You understand that?"

"Yeah. Ah'm so sorry Kim."

"I'm sorry too, Joss. I just…when you told me you weren't a…you know…any more I just took it to mean you were, uh…"

"A slut?"

Kim frowned deeply, but nodded.

"I just didn't know what you were really going through. I really did think we were going to come home one evening and find you on the den futon with some guy."

Joss chuckled slightly, accidentally blowing some nose bubbles in the process. "Guess I did come off as a little harlot there."

"See, three years really isn't that much difference. I've got some growing up to do myself. Still friends?"

Joss put her hand on Kim's arm. "How 'bout sisters?"

"I like that. Just one thing. Do you trust me?"

"Guess so."

"Good. I've got somebody I'd like you to talk to."

Kim pulled over to the side of the road. The communications system in the car could function as a hand's free phone, but she wanted to keep the call a bit more private for the moment. She got out of the car and pulled her conventional cell-phone out of her pocket.

"Rabbi Katz? Kim Possible. I know it's a little late, but I really could use some help…"

* * *

a/n - I realize the last chapter may have seemed like it was taking a very dark turn. Joss really is fine, she's only got some emotional baggage because of a mistake she made in her past that is coming back to haunt her.

* * *

Kim Possible and all related characters © Disney 


	18. Part XVIII

**_Where You Hang Your Hat: _Part XVIII**

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Ron knew he was going to catch it. It wasn't like he had been doing anything all that wrong, but it was one in the morning and he did tell Kim he _was_ going to be home around eleven. Of course she would believe him that he let time get away from him over at Paul's apartment playing video games since that was the honest truth and she could trust him never to lie about such things, but that would do nothing to relieve the anger she would be feeling toward him once he got upstairs.

His only hope was to go the old-fashioned route of sneaking up into the room without making any sound. Some of his ninja training was useful in that regard, but he really never got all that much chance to practice it. Any of that would be for naught if she was still awake and since she really wasn't all that used to him spending time out with his friends, she very likely would be.

All the lights being off in the house was a good sign. Their room faced the road, but unlike when it had just been Kim's, the blinds stayed closed much more often. That didn't keep him from seeing only a dim light, probably one of the nightstand lamps, were on. There was still hope for him. She often fell asleep sitting, reading or working on something for school. He could just imagine her sitting in the bed, pretending to peruse some glossy girly magazine, all the while checking he watch, wondering where he was.

Since the room was directly over the front door, he decided the kitchen door around back was the best way to go. Of course, he would have to enter his code on the pad back there, or risk setting off the main burglar alarm, but then only Wade would know of his comings or goings and, if the last few years had been any indication, he steered well clear of keeping tabs on the two unless they were in mission mode.

Ron knew that kitchen like he knew the back of his hand. He was a study of pure silence as he gently pushed the door closed and latched it. It sure felt strange to be sneaking into what was technically his own home, but the last thing he wanted was to get into it with Kim. They may have had a very healthy, loving relationship, but that didn't mean they were free from having the occasional spat. Make that occasional scream-fest. At heart, Kim was very strictly regimented, orderly (anal, he would sometimes say) while he would only allow enough structure into his life to function. When his responsibilities were fulfilled, it was time to kick back and relax, letting the world come to him. He loved Kim with all his heart, but sometimes she needed to be told to chill. On the other hand, she sometimes had to tell him to get his head in the game.

He did have his lapses. Like right at that moment, in the midst of trying to be as silent as a nighttime breeze, he couldn't help but recall there was a pack of chocolate fudge popsicles in the freezer. Paul had some food over at his place, but since he kept strictly kosher, it wasn't exactly what Ron would consider proper 'snackage.'

They had decided to chip in with the groceries, especially since that gave them the opportunity to stock up on some of their own favorites. The only drawback was that Jim and Tim tended to like a lot of the same junk he did, so the popsicles were hidden behind something the twins knew better than to touch – two quarts of fudge ripple ice cream. That was one of Kim's few real vices.

As quietly as he could, he pried the door open, hoping the hinges wouldn't squeak. He even had a plan for keeping her from noticing the chocolaty goodness on his breath. He'd stop at the bathroom and thoroughly brush his teeth first. He would have to do that anyway, after eating several pastrami on pumpernickel sandwiches.

Ron was reaching for the yellow box when he realized what was wrong. It was sitting in plain view, unhidden.

_Uh oh_.

Kim normally allowed herself one scoop after dinner, just as he was only allowed to have one popsicle, if he was an otherwise good boy. The ice cream had only been in the house since the afternoon before and nobody else was dumb enough to get into Kim's private stash. That meant only one thing…

…Kim was on an ice cream binge.

That usually meant she was upset about something, but keeping it inside. She would start by having just a bowl, then another. Before long she would have the whole quart container out, digging even the last vestiges of the sticky brown fudge from the corners of the cardboard bucket. One quart missing was a bad sign.

Two meant he was in a bucket load of trouble.

He eyeballed the couch over in the family room. Somehow that seemed significantly more appealing than the nice soft (if small) bed waiting for him upstairs in their room. He was figuring if he could get upstairs, out of his clothes and into the bed without waking her, he could then gently nudge her for a goodnight kiss. Perhaps then she would want to celebrate her triumph with the thesis committee. If not, they could snuggle down, keeping warm since the home's air conditioning was set particularly low. If Kim was tweaked enough with him that she had gone through both containers…

He shut the door, the popsicles forgotten. Hanging his head, he mounted the stairs. He got as far as the hatch, his hand hesitating on the latch. Maybe if it was locked… That would be a signal that she was so torqued she didn't even want to speak to him that evening. It would certainly be a reprieve, at least until morning when both of them were rested and ready to discuss his shortcomings in a calm, collected manner.

There was only one way. Taking a deep breath and holding it, he reached for the latch. As his hands closed on the lever, he heard snoring. Kim had a tendency to snore sometimes. Actually, she could saw some pretty good logs when she got going. When that happened, he just had to poke her in the ribs a couple times and she'd roll over, silencing her grinding breathing, at least long enough for him to fall into his customary deep sleep.

He pulled the lever, which surprisingly opened all the way. Slowly he pushed the hatch open, thankful the Teflon coated hinges weren't prone to squeaking. What was waiting for him in the room was an even bigger surprise than he was expecting.

Kim was sound asleep, and empty ice cream container still sitting on her belly. She was wearing one of his old red jerseys, the one her Mom had re-stitched so it would fit her more correctly. Her bare legs were stretched out on top of the comforter, meaning she had pretty much fallen asleep like that.

The big surprise was that she wasn't in the bed alone. Joss was there too, a spoon clutched to her pajama covered chest. It wasn't Kim who was snoring, but her younger cousin. The second empty container was sitting nearby on the floor.

He was aware of the strife between the two of them over the last week. Ron could only suppose that the two of them had finally found some way to bury the hatchet, and in the process had settled into an extended 'girl-talk' session. A little smile crept across his lips, knowing he was going to be spared. There was every likelihood Kim didn't even realize he was out so late.

As quietly as he could, he grabbed his night shorts and tiptoed back to the hatch, closing it gently so the latch would not click. Rufus popped out of his cargo pocket and yawned, stretching his short arms as Ron headed for the bathroom to change.

"Looks like it's couch time, buddy."

Rufus shrugged, climbing up on the lavatory to brush his own teeth before heading off to bed. It probably would have been fair for him to take Joss' bed in exchange, but he wasn't going to invade a teenaged girl's room, even if he had lived in there himself for a while two summers back.

_Ah, the joys of being male_ he thought to himself as he got the blanket out of the hall closet for the first time in recent memory.

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Anne had always been something of a light sleeper. Part of that came with having children. When they were younger, she would get up in the middle of the night and make her rounds, much like when she had done her residency many years earlier. She still did much the same, though she would no longer check on her sleeping children directly. The boys were sixteen, and even though they still shared a room, they had grown a little more secretive and private. If they had not been identical twins, they very likely would have begged for their own individual rooms by that point. It was certainly going to be interesting when they got a little older and started going their separate ways with their girlfriends

She respected Kim's and Ron's privacy for the obvious reasons. When they would occasionally share a bed together when they were younger, the doors would be left unlocked, or even completely open, which had been Kim's custom for most of her life. Both parents would look in on them from time to time. She did simply because it made her heart glad to finally see the two of them together. James would do so making certain his future son-in-law was being a gentleman. To her there was nothing embarrassing about accidentally interrupting them now that they were officially completely together, but the younger couple did not exactly feel the same way, which was understandable. Still, locks were occasionally forgotten and accidents had happened, so she simply, wisely chose not to bother entering during the night.

Her normal soft smile disappeared completely when she got down to the first floor. When she had an early rotation at the Medical Center, she would go ahead and set up the coffee maker, so the automatic timer would have a nice, fresh pot waiting for her when she got up. She didn't get as far as the kitchen when she spotted Ron and Rufus fast asleep on the couch.

That hadn't happened since early spring, when the two of them had let a minor disagreement boil over into a full blown fight. Then it wasn't surprising he had spent the night downstairs, considering the volume of their tiff. If it had happened any earlier he would have likely walked to his parents house and spent the night there.

Kim's and Ron's relationship was good and solid, but like any two human beings living together, it was not perfect. That they were deeply in love could not be denied, but they did sometimes manage to rub the other the wrong way. Part of that came from the fact they spent just so much time together, as if they couldn't stand being apart any longer than their classes required. That was definitely something the two of them would have to work on. Eventually they would have separate careers, keeping them apart throughout the day, and even longer if they were called out of town for an extended business trip. Anne didn't like when that happened between her and James, but it was necessary, and their reunions were always…quite nice.

She sat down on the easy chair, crossing her legs and wondering if she should bother the young man. In his sleep, he didn't seem upset. The night of the fight he spent tossing and turning, grimacing when he actually did get some sleep. Instead he looked peaceful and comfortable, sleeping soundly. Rufus was curled up in a pink little ball on his chest, his tiny head nestled in the crook of his arm.

Sighing quietly, she decided to let the poor boy sleep. If something was wrong between the two of them, they would sort it out shortly. It wasn't any of her business, really, though she still had a burning curiosity about what it was.

Well, she had to be up in three hours anyway. The pieces would have to fall where they may. If he was half-awake or tossing, she would have felt better about waking him, perhaps chasing him up the stairs to either get in bed with Kim or hash out whatever was coming between them. Their relationship was almost as important to her as it was to them. Anne had a secret desire to become a grandmother before she turned fifty.

She tried to ease her mind as she climbed the stairs back to her room. There were plenty of nights before Kim came along that James spent on the couch. Sometimes it did a couple good to work things through. They certainly would have a better time of it than they did, considering their relationship with Ron's Rabbi. At that stage of their lives, they were going through a period where church was just not important to them, cutting them off from that kind of guidance, if it even existed in that form. Gerry Katz was one of those rare religious leaders who cared more for his congregation as people than how many of them were in the pews on Saturday or Sunday morning.

Even with that kind of mental reassurance, she went back to sleep with a troubled mind.

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Ron was having one of those types of dreams that seemed incredibly pleasant, but would fade the moment he awakened. Something was really nice, and his mind was not quite willing to let go of it. He had the image of soft, closely manicured fingers brushing his hair back from his forehead. Grinning, a particular question he often asked early in the morning escaped his lips.

"KP, would you like a little wake-up call this morning?"

He opened his eyes as the dream fled back into his subconscious. A green-eyed face framed with auburn red hair, drawn back into a ponytail, was smiling down at him. Kim was in the process of running her fingers through his hair, holding his head in her lap.

It took him a moment, but he slowly realized he was not in their room, but on the family room couch. Not only that, but he was not alone with her. He glanced down, noting that Joss was sitting there, with his lower legs draped across her lap. He turned a rather becoming shade of pink, hoping the younger Possible didn't quite know what that particular question actually meant.

He looked back up at Kim, who was blushing herself. That was when he realized that her father was sitting now four feet away in his easy chair, glaring at him over the top of his newspaper. _He _obviously realized what a 'little wake-up call' entailed.

"Good morning to you too, _Ronald_." He kept his glared centered on the young man a moment more, barely getting his paper back up before breaking out in a wide smile, enjoying a tiny bit of torture directed at him.

"What time is it?" He sat up, conscious that he was shirtless. Joss grinned at him a moment, then set about tickling the bottom of his feet.

"Ow, quit that!" He tried pulling away, but she grabbed one of his ankles with her loose hand, fully intent on her own brand of early-morning torture.

"It's a quarter of eight." Kim said, leaning over and giving him a light kiss. "You know, you could have gotten us up when you got home."

"I, uh, well."

"Ronnie, you weren't in trouble."

"Sorry, KP. Looked a little too pajama party in there last night. All that ice cream, painted toenails…"

"Well, you coulda woke us up and had a pilla fight with us." Joss was still hanging onto his ankle, though she finally relented on the tickling.

He shook his head. "There are some things guys just shouldn't do, and pillow fights…that's something you watch on cable."

James' paper drooped down once more. "I'm not about to get a nasty surprise from pay-per-view, am I?"

"No, no sir, uh, uh." He pleaded, looking straight into Kim's glaring eyes.

"You're sweet anyway." She gave him another kiss, lingering a tad longer that time. "So, what do you want to do today? It's your last day to be with an older woman for a while, you know."

He finally got his feet free from Joss' grasp, turning and sitting up properly. "Lake?"

"Uh, uh. Storms this afternoon."

"Then how 'bout the pool. We can hit that this morning before the storms get here, then maybe we could hit the mall for a little while."

"No can do, baby. This is your birthday and I don't want to go broke while you pick out everything under the sun."

"Hey, if it's my choice, how come the mall's out?"

"Cause you're just saying that because I like to shop, and don't bother fibbing that it's not."

Ron glanced at Kim, then to her Dad, then back to her. A wicked little smile sprang to life, but she leaned over, whispering softly in his ear. "Daddy's off from work today, if you know what I mean."

"Oh." He whispered back, enduring yet another little glare from the elder Possible.

"What's the name a that western style town up in the mountains?" Joss asked. "The one with all the old timey steam trains? That would be just spankin!"

"Durango?" Kim asked. "That's a two hour drive from here, and it's so…touristy." They knew the place well, having gone there on several occasions, though the last time, a couple years earlier they barely even left their room. It was the last day of their first big trip together and they wanted to get away from town after recovering from the mission that vacation had turned into.

"Actually, I think Durango would be badical! Joss could dress up in her cowgirl stuff…heck, we could borrow your folk's country line-dancing stuff."

"Oh no! No way! I couldn't show my face if anyone actually saw me like that."

James leaned forward. "You could always tell everyone you're Wanda and Eugene Krumholtz, no relation to Kim Possible of Middleton College."

"Works for me." Ron said. "My middle name's Eugene anyway."

"Hey, I was just talkin bout the two of you. I got no business…"

"Yes, you are. It's my birthday and I want both of you with me. Lemme just run upstairs and take a shower and we can load up the car."

"I don't know." Kim still looked dubious.

"Please." Ron tilted his head, opening his eyes up as wide as they would go, pushing his lower lip out as far as it would go, looking for all the world like he was about to start blubbering."

"No…way! Ron! You can't…THAT' MINE!" Kim hung her mouth open in abject shock.

"Oh my lord, let me get the camera. Ronald, you've got Kimmie-cub's pout thing nailed! Kudos on the realism." James laughed.

Kim held up her hands in defeat. "Oh, this is just so wrong. Okay, we'll drive up to Durango, but there is no way I'm going to wear that western stuff. I'd look like Drakken when he took over the Crooked D."

Joss giggled loudly, recalling the blue-skinned villain, dressed from head to toe in what had to be the silliest fake western wear she had seen in her life.

"Oh, you're going too, Joss." Kim wagged her finger.

"Ah'll get my hat." She said, hopping off the couch and heading for her room."

Kim followed Ron up the steps to their room. He didn't so much as get his bathrobe out before Kim grabbed him, crashing down on the bed with him.

"So, what trouble did you and your buddies get into last night?" She brushed his hair back again, between little kisses."

He held his fingers barely apart. "I'm getting this close to beating his score on GWA Slam-fest."

"That's what I love about you. You're so full of childlike wonder." She kissed him again, resting her weight on him. "Oh, by the way, you know what?"

"What?"

"I do want a little wake-up call. Joss can wait a little bit."

"Boo-yah!" He got out, before she kissed him once more.

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Kim Possible and all related characters © Disney


	19. Part XIX

**_Where You Hang Your Hat: _Part XIX**

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Strange place, strange bed.

Those were Kim's first thoughts as the morning sun started filtering through the motel windows. It wasn't her new queen size bed with the fancy foam core mattress, nor was it the nice, soft smaller bed of her old room. She had her head buried in a single, too firm, too small pillow. The mattress was a bit on the lumpy side, worse even than the full bed that temporarily equipped Ron's old bedroom, but not unbearably so. Her back was stiff and her muscles ached, partly from how she slept, and partly from the day and night before.

Every time Kim had come to Durango before, it had been with Ron. Oddly enough, her parents had never brought her and her brothers to the tourist town. Maybe it had something to do with the fact the Tweebs considered narrow-gauge steam trains boring compared to rockets. Then again, her father was likely the same way. She sometimes had a mental image of him wearing an engineer's hat, with a model railroad layout taking up a whole room of the house. For some odd reason that seemed like it would be in character with him, but it had never, ever happened. The only time he had ever shown the tiniest bit of interest in trains.

Ron, on the other hand, was apparently a closet railroad nut. The first time they had driven up there as a day trip, he immediately bought himself one of those striped hats, then proceeded to cover it with buttons and pins from railroads Kim had never even heard of before. He even found a complete engineer's outfit for Rufus, complete with bandana.

After buying their tickets, Kim just about had to bodily drag him away from the locomotive. Her interest in the train was spending some quiet time holding hands with him while they watched the rugged mountain scenery.

Ever since, they had fallen into a pattern of arriving, buying train tickets, riding, dinner, then a hotel room for some private time before driving back to Middleton the next morning.

Touring Durango with Joss in tow was a whole other ball of wax. Actually, she was more of the one in the lead. She wanted to go in every single shop in the tourist area, especially western wear stores. She really had a good laugh at some of the stuff being pawned off as cowboy wear, babbling incessantly about how a hat was supposed to be made and why boots were shaped the way they were, or which chaps would actually worked and which ones just plain looked silly.

She even talked Ron into trying some of the stuff on. Kim joined in with her cousin begging him to put the outfit on, once she realized exactly what it was. He came out of the dressing room with the pink shirt, tan chaps, ten gallon hat and a belt buckle that weighed ten pounds if it was an once. Both women just giggled at him.

"What's wrong? I feel muy macho in this getup."

The girls just looked at each other and cracked up. Kim grabbed him by the shoulders and turned him back toward the mirror. "Take a good look, Ronnie. What does that remind you of?"

He was grinning from ear to ear, running his fingers on the brim of the hat. "That your man is a sex-ay cowpoke?"

Joss sat on the edge of a table near the dressing room giggling, looking much more like the little girl Ron had first met five years earlier. "That's it, Kim. Better check that hat fer hidden circuits."

He turned and looked in the mirror one more time. "Oh no! You didn't!"

Kim ran her fingernails down the middle of his back. "I can just imagine what you'd look like if you turned into 'Bad Boy' again. Really, I think you would look spankin in blue skin. It'd really show off that pink shirt."

"Be right back." He grumbled, picking out another shirt and some jeans before going back into the dressing room. "I can't believe the two of you dressed me up like Drakken."

Kim leaned over the edge of the door. "Ron, we're just playing you. We're here to have fun, remember?"

"I'll get you for this, Kimberly Anne. Booyahahahahahahaha!"

"What in tarnation?" Joss cocked her head, looking straight at the dressing room as if she could see right through the louvered door.

"Long story. Short version, Drakken's evil got put into Ron and it not only turned him blue, it turned him into a super-villain some we call Zorpox."

"Oh yeah, I 'member that one now. Bet ya looked like somethin else with that cat-woman suit on."

"Eccccck! Don't remind me." Kim stuck her tongue out.

"I just wish you'd put that badical outfit back on sometimes." Ron quipped, leering at her.

"In your dreams, Bad Boy."

"Why yes, yes you are." He stepped out, adding a more modest Stetson hat to the ensemble. The jeans were cut for boots, but the backside was significantly tighter. The shirt was shiny royal blue, with a white fringe across the chest.

"I just can't believe any kind of hero or villain would run around in a suit with a fake tail like that. All it took was Shego putting her foot down on it and I was on the floor."

"That suit had a tail?"

She shot him another glare. "You looked at my butt enough."

He leered at her again. "Sorry, didn't notice the tail."

"Yer turn." Joss said, nodding at the stall.

"Oh no. I'll wear one of those hats, but there is no way I'm wearing a getup like that." She glanced back at Ron. "And don't you try the Puppy Dog Pout on me, you got that mister?"

"You said it yourself, KP, we're here to have fun."

"My idea of fun is so not wearing something that looks like a rodeo clown. No offense, Joss."

"Spoil sport." Her cousin was already wearing an outfit very similar to Ron's, with stitched scrollwork on the shoulders of her shirt. "Yer gonna look like a pack mule in a herd of palominos dressed like that where we're goin."

"Where we're going?"

She had to ask. Even though it was still high-summer, she was dressed in one of her favorite outfits, a pale yellow peasant shirt, distinctly non-western jeans and a pair of purple sneakers. Ron griped at her from time to time about the shoes, even though he did like her in that top. The shoes just plain didn't go with anything, but they were comfortable, and to her, that's all that mattered.

Somehow the two convinced her to at least wear a hat, which was fine with her even though it made her look all that much more like a tourist. Fortunately, that was the lifeblood of the little town, so nobody spared her a glance when they went into the country-western themed dance club.

Kim still pulled a face as they found an empty table. For the moment, there was a slow dance going on, so she immediately pulled Ron out there, snuggling close while danced to the music. She didn't care much for the tune itself, something that droned on and on about 'Easy Lovin', but that didn't matter when she had the opportunity to dance with him like that.

It didn't last, however. The music changed and, much to her dismay, the dancers were forming up into lines. It was one of her worst nightmares, but she was caught out there on the floor and was too self-conscious to scurry back to her table. Her idea of dancing to something up-tempo like that usually involved a lot of hip-swinging.

Ron noticed her stumbling along, trying to get into the line-dance. "Come on, KP. It's just like some of the cheer routines you did." He was holding his belt, shuffling his feet like he had been doing it his whole life.

She tried watching the steps. _I can do anything_ she reminded herself, but still just couldn't mimic the movements in time with the rest of the crowd. Joss had appeared at Ron's other side, dancing perfectly in step with him.

The music couldn't end soon enough as far as she was concerned. She hastily retreated to the table, shelling peanuts as the other two took up the next dance.

The whole ordeal looked a little better from that vantage point. Both of them were grinning from ear to ear, moving like they had been born dancing like that. Joss probably had been. It was entirely likely she had been line-dancing since before she learned to walk. Ron, on the other hand, was just a good dancer. It always amazed her that he couldn't even do the simplest cheer routines without tons of practice. Most of his nearly three-year career as the Middleton Mad Dog had been spent doing zany antics. It wasn't until their senior year when Kim started integrating his routine in with the rest of the squad, much to Bonnie's chagrin. He was good enough to make it work, especially since a lot of their cheers had to be simplified a bit because more than half of the old championship squad had graduated a year ahead of them.

The music changed again, once more shifting to a slower tempo. For a moment she considered getting up and joining Ron, but Joss had already moved in and they were having such a good time, she didn't really want to mess it up. He was dancing with her cousin like a proper gentleman, with his free hand around her waist, keeping a respectful distance.

Her eyes narrowed slightly when the younger Possible leaned in closer, putting her head on his shoulder, which was a bit of a stretch considering she was an inch shorter than her. Kim fought down the urge to go cut in, knowing her cousin still had some feelings for him, but Ron looked properly nervous about the sitch and Joss seemed content dancing like that, so she let it be.

She watched carefully as the next dance started. Step, step, shuffle, scoot, step. It really shouldn't be that hard. Concentrating, she moved her feet under the table, tying to envision how it would play out on the dance floor. She was about to go out there and join them when she overheard some of the other nearby patrons.

"Isn't that Kim Possible?" A lady asked.

Kim tried spotting where the speaker was. There was a couple seated at a nearby table, but they weren't looking at her. Instead they were focused on Ron and Joss.

"I didn't know she could dance like that." The gentleman with the lady said.

"Hey, that's that guy she's engaged to, isn't it? Don something?"

"You know, I think it is."

The woman leaned on her arm. "They sure make a cute couple. I wonder who that older girl was that came in with them."

"I dunno. Older sister maybe?"

That was enough for her. Joss did bear a strong family resemblance, but the last thing she wanted was for people to think she had brown hair and distinct freckles…and what was that crack about looking older? If anything, Joss was a little more developed than she was. Their height difference wasn't enough.

She wasn't about to make a scene with the people, but she had to 'put in an appearance' in any case. Building up her resolve, she strode right out onto the floor, just in time for another slow dance. This time she didn't waste any time with a formal dance, she embraced her fiancé, dancing closer than anyone else out there.

Halfway through the number, she laid a kiss on him that left little doubt who the real couple was. Later, as they got ready to leave, she realized just how much fun she actually was having. Unlike her earlier attempts, she danced with as much prowess as the other two had shown.

The sun was dipping below the mountaintops when they finally left. A single lonesome whistle signaled the approaching train. They had missed the day's excursions and it was rapidly getting towards time to drive back to Middleton. That was when Ron suggested they take the one remaining train ride available that day; the dinner train.

"I don't know, Ron. That's a pretty tough drive down out of the mountains in daylight."

"Aw, come on, KP. We came to ride the train. Besides, who says we have to go home tonight?"

"That sounds spankin." Joss proclaimed, her arm hooked in Ron's as they walked toward the depot.

"Okay, but we're heading home first thing in the morning." She grimaced slightly. They hadn't brought any luggage except for the 'emergency' packs in the car, which contained sets of mission clothes. Since she hadn't bought any of the 'costumes' she really only had that and the clothes she had on. A day spent walking the shops, then dancing had left her wanting a fresh change as it was, let alone having to sleep in day-old clothes and undergarments.

The train ride itself wasn't as spectacular as one of the day excursions. The sun set more quickly in the shadow of the rugged mountains and it was difficult to see even with the full moon shining overhead. Fortunately, that wasn't the point of the ride. The three of them were treated to a four-course dinner that tasted wonderful to her and Joss, and was judged to be slightly above par by Ron, who had turned into something of a food critic after studying the culinary arts for three years.

Kim even had one of the dark Irish beers she had grown fond of, chiding Ron for still being just a few hours shy of enjoying one himself. He did try a sip of it, turning his nose up just as he did for almost any kind of brew. He just didn't get the point.

It was already rather late when the train finally pulled back into town. Still, being a tourist place, the shops were still open, so they wandered around for a bit, just looking at the same trinkets over and over again before starting their search for a room. It really was too late to attempt heading back to Middleton by that point since there was always the danger whoever was driving would nod off. Kim wasn't going to dare driving, though she had only had the one pint.

Then it hit them. They were there during the peak tourist season. They went by motel after motel, all with No Vacancy signs lit. Up till that point she was actually looking forward to finding a room and getting a little frisky with Ron.

Finally they found a place, but the only room they had left was a double. All thoughts of a little 'goodnight kiss' fun went right out the window with the prospect of Joss sleeping just five feet away from them.

Her cousin seemed to sense what she was thinking. "I kin always leave tha two a you alone for a bit, if ya know what I mean." She whispered as they surveyed the small but clean room.

Kim held up her hand, shaking her head. "I am so not letting you wander around a place like this alone at night."

"Suit yerself." Not waiting to be asked, she plopped down on the nearest bed, claiming the one by the window.

The sleeping arrangements decided, they all climbed into the beds. Joss borrowed the jersey Ron had been wearing earlier in the day, while Kim just slipped off her jeans before getting under the covers.

Waking up the following morning, she sighed. Two nights in a row, and she hadn't been able to be with Ron. Of course, they had a little tumble the morning before, but it was rare over the last few months they hadn't had what they referred to privately as their 'good night kiss.' It seemed so strange waking up on Ron's birthday without having had a private celebration.

She checked her watch. It was just a little past six. Joss had her back to them and was contentedly snoring, apparently sound asleep. Amazingly, Ron was on his back, softly snoring himself. The air-conditioning was set on high, so the room was fairly cold and usually he would have been snuggled up against her, especially considering the lumpy bed was even smaller than the one they shared at her parent's house.

As quietly as she could, she scooted up next to him. He was sleeping in the navy turtleneck he wore under the jersey and his boxers and he was so warm. She nestled her head on his shoulder, shaking him gently.

It took a few minutes to fully wake him. Ron was a deep sleeper and most def not a morning person. In a few weeks she was going to have to start training him to get up at a reasonable hour again once their classes started, but for the time being both of them were enjoying the chance to sleep in on a regular basis. She had never done that before, preferring to keep the same schedule during most summer days, but ever since they had permanently started sleeping together, she found it was very relaxing staying put until eight, or even later.

Kim wrapped her arm around his chest, hooking her leg over his, gently kissing his neck since they both would have a good dose of morning breath. It only took him a couple minutes to realize where they were, and that they weren't alone.

Silently he pointed across the bed with his free arm.

"She's sound asleep." Kim whispered in his ear, nibbling on his lobe.

"KP, isn't this a little, uh, weird?"

"Shhhhh. I got to open my present on my birthday. Gotta return the favor, you know."

"Whoa. It's not like you're all that quiet, you know."

"I can be quiet when I have to." The hand on his chest slipped down, pulling the covers up over their shoulders before disappearing under those same blankets.

"Oh, that's nice." He breathed.

She started kissing his neck again, but stopped. The room was silent and she knew they weren't making any noise other than whispers that only the other could hear. Then it occurred to her.

Joss wasn't snoring any more.

Slowly Kim looked back over her shoulder. Joss had rolled over, partially facing them. One turquoise eye was open, staring at them across the gulf between the two beds.

She rolled onto her back, covering her blushing face with both her hands, fully realizing what she had been about to do with her impressionable cousin only a few feet away.

A huge grin broke out on Joss' face. "Don't stop on my 'count." She said out loud, rolling back over, pulling the covers up over her.

"Oh God, oh God, oh God." Kim moaned through her hands. Ron sat up in the bed, chuckling slightly. He leaned over, pulling her hands down and gave her a great big hug. "Who's up for breakfast?" He said aloud.

Joss threw off her covers. "Now yer talkin." She padded towards the bathroom to change back into her clothes. Stopping at the door, she leaned back into the room. "…but if you two caint start yer day without that little…wake up call, jes lemme know and I'll take me a shower." She shot them the biggest grin she was capable of and shut the door.

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Kim Possible and all related characters © Disney


	20. Part XX

**_Where You Hang Your Hat: _Part XX**

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Kim held her hands up in frustration as they got into her Cruiser. "Enough, Joss. I'm embarrassed enough as it is, just let it drop." Ron was still inside, standing in line to pay for their breakfast. The pancake place looked like it had been lifted out of any mountain resort in the world and plunked down in the middle of the tourist area. It was easily twice as expensive as the same kind of food at home, but they were sort of a captive audience, not knowing where the locals sought their morning repast.

Joss' smile was still stretching from turquoise-and-silver earring to turquoise-and-silver earring. "Kim, if I'd a known I was in for dinner _and_ a show, I'd a come up her with you two a long time ago."

Kim slipped into the tan leather seats on the passenger side. The single pint of beer logically would have been long out of her system, but it didn't hurt to be careful. Besides, Ron could always use the practice and she was the one who had shot him down when he wanted to buy his own car. For the moment, she thought that would just be wasteful. They went almost everywhere together, including school. All that would change after they graduated. The last thing she wanted was to be stuck somewhere like at her graduate school lectures while she waited for Ron to come pick her up…or vice versa.

"Joss, how many times do I have to say I'm sorry?"

"Kim, nothin to be sorry 'bout. I'm not 'fended by you an Ron doin what comes natural."

Kim covered her eyes with one hand. "I had no right, there in front of you. Oy, I still can't believe I did that. Must have been that stupid beer."

"Oh, give me a break, Kim. You had one of those stinky dark beers and on a full stomach ta boot. You didn't have 'nough in ya to tipsy a termite. You were just…"

"Frisky?" Kim provided.

"Not the word I would a used, but it works."

Ron leaned in the open driver's side window. "You know, they do have a morning train ride. We could hop on that and see all the stuff we couldn't last night. I was just in there talking to a guy who turned out to the engineer, he said he might even be able to let me ride up in the cab! I mean, right up there with them driving the train. That rocks! No, it stadium rocks!"

"Amp down there, baby. Don't forget Mom and Dad are taking us all out to dinner tonight, and it takes two hours to get home in good traffic. If we hit the expressway at rush hour."

"Aw man. Come on, KP. If we're running behind we can have Wade send the flyer down to pick us up."

"No way. The Blue Fox Flyer is for missions only. I'm not calling it in every time we need to get somewhere."

"Pfffft. Like Wade cares. He's just stoked when you use one of his creations. Anyway, the excursion's supposed to be back around lunch time, we could hit _Frontier Footlongs_ before we head home…it's not like it's going to spoil _my_ appetite."

Joss leaned up between the front seats. "Ron, I think what Kim's tryin ta say is, she wants to get home in time for some _afternoon delight_."

He waved a hand dismissively. "Ah, we can do that any…"

"Ron!" Kim growled, dividing her glare between her fiancé and her cousin. "Keep that up and a certain somebody is going to be sleeping on the couch one more night."

"Don't worry, Ron. I'll come out and keep ya company."

"So not." Kim focused her stare on Joss, giving her 'the look.' "Besides, I've suddenly got a craving for a Naco, and for some reason this seems to be the only town I've ever seen that didn't have a BN."

"Better hop in here. You know how Kim gets 'bout her cravins."

"Urrrrgh! Keep that up, Joss, and you're going to learn you're not the only one here who knows how to hog tie something."

"I'd sure like ta see ya try."

"Oh, uh, KP, thought you'd like to see this." He handed her a newspaper he had rolled up in his hand. It was a copy of _Inventive Chilling_, a free publication that produced in Middleton, adding their own local stories to nationally syndicated fare. Apparently they were available there in Durango as well.

Kim unfurled the paper, looking at the cover. "So? Not sure I care about the alt-rock scene in Lowerton."

"Look at that teaser down in the corner."

She hadn't noticed it at first, but just as he said, there was a simple headline that read "Homeless Hero." With a good idea what it may be about, she turned to the indicated page. There, amidst dozens of ads for various dating services and other less-than-savory sounding ventures was a large black-and-white photo of her, standing in the lobby of the Middleton College auditorium, dressed only in a bikini and flip-flops.

"Gah!" She read the accompanying story. There was barely a mention of the fact that forty-nine other tenants, many with families, were forced out of the apartment complex.

"It so figures. They only seem to care about the fact we were living there together. Great, just great. Oh, come on. Don't they even know your name? And you're not just my boyfriend!" She growled again, noting the caption under the photo. "All grown up?"

"Er, maybe I should have waited until we got home to show you that."

Kim opened her door back up, throwing the paper face-down in the seat. She paced back and forth a couple times, wishing she could just go back into the breakfast place and grab every single copy. She knew better than to do that, considering the likelihood of there being somebody in the crowd with a cell-phone camera, and yet another bad picture of her would be floating around. It was bad enough that picture had been splashed all over the Tri-City area during the evening and late news that night, with her hair damp and matted down, no makeup, looking more like a beach-bound party girl than the conservative girl-next-door she had always tried to be.

"What's next? Me on the cover of _Folks Weekly_?"

"KP, there's no reason to get tweaked. They did the same thing that summer we were down there in Fort Summerdell, and they didn't even catch on that we were down there with our families."

"It's just not fair, Ron. Don't they get it that I love you like nothing else? If Rabbi Katz is okay with it, why can't everyone else. We're practically married for crying out loud." She sat down on the edge of the sidewalk, drooping her shoulders.

"It's not the end of the world, Kim. I know what we mean to each other. Who cares what they think?"

"I care, Ron. I don't want the world thinking I'm some kind of little tramp who shacks up with every Tom Dick and Harry out there. People see what they want to see, and they make their own minds up about it. Face it, there's real Food Chains out there everywhere. Maybe you don't see it, but people I know, people I like, trust and respect are going to read this thing and they're going to have a certain opinion of me. Those same people are the ones we go to when we have to trade in a favor, or sit in judgment of me when I'm making a presentation, just like that last one."

Ron opened the car door and got the paper out, turning it back to the picture. "Look, KP, what do you see?"

She glanced at it, then looked away. "I see me dressed like I'm ready for Mardis Gras in a story about me living with some guy.

He held it up in front of her. "No. Look closer. They might be majorly misinterpreting what's going on in the article, but what people are going to remember is that picture."

"Oh Yay." She said despondently.

"Kim. Look again. I think you're missing some important stuff. Yeah, you looked badical in that suit, but they caught some other things too." To make his point, he reached for her left hand, twisting the ring so the jewels were right in the middle. She didn't wear the necklaces or the emerald earrings so much any more, but she almost never took the engagement ring off.

She took the paper from him and looked again. Sure enough, the ring was clearly visible in the picture, as well as something else. She laid they paper down on her lap, twining her fingers with his. "Oh, I'm like so the drama right now, aren't I."

"No, but you're just a little itty bitty bit vain."

"How stupid can I be not to notice you were in that picture with me. Oh Ron, forgive?"

"Always. Babe, it's us together, and if the grocery store rags come calling, all I'm gonna say is that I'm with the most badical, beautiful, wonderful woman in the world. Besides, we're kinda-sorta married already anyway."

"That doesn't exactly count. The only people on Earth who know about that, who _can_ know about that are our parents and Rabbi Katz, but I know what you mean." She got up and dusted her backside off. "Okay, let's see if it's not too late to get you a train ride, Choo-choo boy."

"Spankin." Joss agreed, climbing back out of the car. "See, they're already gettin ready to go over there." She pointed past some nearby rooftops, where a plume of black smoke was rising.

"That's weird." Ron said, raising an eyebrow. "I thought the tracks were back there." He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, in the direction of the restored depot where they bought their tickets for the dinner train the night before.

"That's an awful lot of smoke for a steam engine to be idling anyway." Kim said. She pulled her keys out and punched the button on the remote, opening the rear hatch. She grabbed the three backpacks, shrugging into hers and handing the others to Ron and Joss. "That may be nothing, could be some tracks we didn't see before, but I'm worried it's not supposed to be doing that."

The other two started after her, Ron struggling with the straps, considering her was walking and trying to put it on at the same time. Kim reached behind her into a Velcro slash, pulling her equipment belt out and snapping it around her waist. She knew it looked a little strange with her 'civilian' clothes, but there wasn't a good place to change into her mission gear. The smoke was too thick and too black to be from a steam locomotive in her opinion, and she had a pretty good idea what it was.

They broke out into a light run when the sirens started. They cleared a row of three and four story hotels and the source of the billowing smoke was revealed.

It wasn't a train, but an older hotel. The structure was built of brick, but like their own lost apartment, most of the interior and likely the whole frame was built of local timber. Smoke was pouring from a number of upper windows, but flames were visible even on the ground floor. What looked like an attached restaurant was going up in flames, taking the aging building with it.

There was no sign of the fire department yet. That was more than likely the sirens they heard, meaning the fire had only just broken out. It was already do large the whole building would shortly be engulfed, and the full parking lot around it told the tale. The building was in operation and there would be people inside.

Pulling her grappler, she took aim at a dormer on the roof. The super-strong line played out from inside the old style hair-dryer casing. She had several newer ones, with the molecular binding grappler instead of the retractable bladed one, but this was her trusted old one, the same one she first used when she raided Drakken's lair inside the World's Biggest Cheese wheel. She didn't have her super-suit or even her newer mission gear with the self-healing fabric, but she had been doing this before she even had the old cargos and turtleneck like the ones folded up in her backpack. They were going to help, and they were going to do it old-school.

The hook dug into the wood frame and held fast. Almost immediately the line went taught and she was sailing through the air. For half an instant she wished she had thought to get her gloves out of the pack as well, but she had little trouble hanging on. Her hand strength was phenomenal. It had to be considering the speed her grappler could pull her along, and the fact that sometimes Ron was hanging onto her for dear life.

She spun around as she neared the window, kicking outwards as she hit, thankful she was wearing full-length blue-jeans instead of shorts. Glass flew everywhere and her legs would have been cut to ribbons if it weren't for the heavy denim cloth.

The room she landed in was empty, and already filled with smoke. With a twist, the blades of the grappler retracted, freeing themselves from the wood. The line barely had enough time to snake back into the casing before it was back in it's home, an specially enlarged pistol holster. It was amazing how many people actually thought she was armed. Kim didn't use weapons, save the non-lethal type. Her way was to stop the bad guys.

There were no bad guys in her current sitch, unless one counted the smoke and flames. Once again she lamented not having some of her gadgets, like thermal imaging glasses. She would have to rely on her other senses. Still, with all the smoke, she was going to have to dig the down low pretty quickly and get back outside before she would be overcome herself.

Above the sound of groaning, burning wood, she heard another grappler go off. There was no way to tell from her current vantage point if it were Ron or Joss, but she knew either one would be able to handle themselves. Joss had a great deal of Global Justice training under her belt, and had already been performing rescues of this nature up around her home in Montana. Ron she simply trusted unconditionally, though she still worried about him. Fires were unpredictable and even the professionals sometimes didn't come back out.

There was no time to think about that at the present. Deciding the room was clear, she moved on, staying as low as she could to avoid the bulk of the smoke. Being on the top floor, she was almost blinded by it. Her eyes were already burning and she was fighting off the urge to cough. If that started, she knew she wouldn't be able to stop and would have to get out before she was able to help anybody.

Then she heard something that made her heart sink. The screaming was obviously coming from a child, though it was impossible to tell any more than the general direction it was coming from. She hesitated a moment at the door, recalling the lessons that had been taught in grade school. The door was warm, but not extremely hot. Taking a chance, she opened it, ready to jump back in case flames reached for her.

The hallway beyond the room was indeed ablaze, but she couldn't stop then. The screaming was alternating with crying. The smoke was even thicker and the heat was oppressive. The carpet on the floor was on fire and she noted with a great deal of anger there were sprinkler heads mounted in the ceiling, but no water was coming down. Either the system was damaged, or worse, was in such disrepair it was useless.

Shoving that though back into her mind, she pressed onwards. By then her eyes were just about useless. The smoke was stinging and it was getting harder to breath. She just had to concentrate on the screams. She reached another door where they seemed the loudest. She spun and kicked, smashing the wooden frame of the door, knocking it partially askew.

The girl was probably four or five years old. She was still dressed in footie pajamas and even in the thick smoke she could see the unmade bed. There was no sign of the child's parents, so she did the first thing she could. Scooping up the child, she made her way to the window. A couple tugs on the latch failed to open and it appeared that it had long ago been painted shut. A silent air conditioner unit told the tale. Whoever owned the building had set it up so their guests would have the greatest in comfort, never considering they might need the window as an escape route.

She looked back at the hallway. The flames were getting higher, cutting off any hope of escape that route. Putting the screaming child down for a moment, she grabbed the small round table from the corner and heaved it through the window. With the grip of her grappler, she cleared the worst of the remaining glass.

Grabbing the girl once more, she hooked the grapple to edge and swung her feet out, lower them quickly to the ground, into the waiting arms of a fireman who was just on the scene, about to charge headlong into the blaze.

The coughing started as she handed the child off. Tears were streaming from her eyes and it was hard to stand upright. She coughed and gulped, trying to get clean air into her smoke-filled lungs. As she blacked out she felt something being pressed against her face.

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Kim opened her eyes, seeing the inferno raging nearby. She was sitting on a plastic tarp not far from an ambulance. The building would be a total loss, but the only thing she could think about were the other guests who might be trapped inside. Not only that, there was no sign of Ron and Joss. If she could be knocked out so quickly by the smoke, they were probably in deep trouble.

She sat up, realizing that an oxygen mask was strapped to her face. She had no idea how long she had been out, but judging from the looks of things, it must have been some time. The fire had spread throughout the structure, forcing the fire department to concentrate on keeping it from spreading to the adjacent properties. Water arced high through the air, which was filled with a mixture of steam and smoke.

Feeling better, save for her watering eyes, she pulled the mask of and tried getting up. An EMT rushed to her side, pushing her back down."

"Don't get up, Miss. You inhaled an awful lot of smoke back there."

She didn't care one whit for herself in that moment. "Where's Ron?...and Joss?"

"I don't know who that is."

"Uh, he's this much taller than me." She held her hand a few inches above her head. "Blonde, wearing a red hockey jersey. Joss looks a lot like me, but with brown hair. She was wearing jeans and a teal crop top."

The EMT, an African-American woman in her thirties just shook her head. "Don't worry, everyone is accounted for. That girl you got out was the last one."

"You don't understand." She was starting to gasp a little again, the urge to cough almost doubling her over. "They weren't guests, we were just trying to help."

The mask was forced back onto her face, calming the coughing a little bit. Just as she looked up, the entire roof of the structure caved in, sending up a huge cloud of black smoke and burning embers.

"Ron!" She wailed behind the mask.

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Kim Possible and all related characters © Disney


	21. Part XXI

**_Where You Hang Your Hat: _Part XXI**

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The morning sun kept rising in the sky, occasionally blotted out by the huge plume of smoke pouring from what had once been an older, slightly up-scale hotel. The shingled mansard roof was all but obliterated as it fell into the flames, consumed as if into the maw of some great beast hiding there amidst the conflagration.

Even from where Kim stood the heat was oppressive. She had ripped the oxygen mask of and ran away before the EMT could stop her again, but by that point the police were there, blocking any further access to the scene.

A nearby wall collapsed toward them, sending a cloud of smoke, dust and embers their way. The crowd surged back, but Kim just kept pressing through them. She almost got through when a thick arm clad in tan blocked her path. The police officer shot her a grim look but otherwise kept his mouth shut.

Skirting the edge of the police line, Kim tried looking for a way in. Part of the framework was still up, if she could just get it with her grappler…

…her hand went to her hip. The pouch was empty. For wall she knew, the grappler was still attached to that window, now buried under the burning rubble of the collapsed wall.

She tried seeing into the ruined structure, but all she could see was billowing smoke and orange flames. The heat washed over her in waves, hotter than she could have imagined being almost a hundred feet away from it. Not even the fire department was trying to go inside to fight the fire. They were making do with pouring as much water on it as fast as they could. Their only hope at that point was to protect the neighboring buildings.

If tears were coming from her eyes, they were dried instantly by the heat. She stared into the flames, hoping that Ron and Joss somehow got out of there before the building started collapsing. Even if the firemen knew they were inside, there was almost nothing that could be done by that point. Anything living in there would have been incinerated.

Something caught her eye, just at the edge of the rubble. Pushing past another officer, she scooped it up before retreating back behind the lines. The Durango Sheriff's department deputy eyed her warily for a moment, but since she was not rushing toward the building he turned his attention elsewhere. He had to much on his mind to worry about somebody grabbing a ripped piece of cloth.

Kim held it in her hands. It was scorched in several places, and ripped lengthwise, but she would know those pants anywhere. Ron kept wearing them, even when he started growing. They were so baggy on him when he was younger it really didn't matter. She turned ruined pair of tan cargo pants around in her hands, finding the place on the knee where she had drawn little hearts on it in ballpoint during a quiet moment back in high school. Most of the ink washed right out since she hadn't been bearing down, but the faint impression, with RS plus KP drawn in the middle.

The pants had been sewn back together uncounted times. Kim's Mom had even added extra belt loops and had taken in the waist just a tad, trying to keep them from falling down. Keeping them on tighter had only made the old, thinning fabric more prone to rip. At first she tried getting him to go to Smarty Mart, or better, to Club Banana and get a new pair, but about the time she started drawing her little love notes on them she realized they were as much a part of Ron as his skin.

There would be no repairing them this time. Part of the legs had burned away, and the whole had ripped lengthwise. For a moment she panicked anew, reaching into the two cargo pockets sewn lower down on the legs. Her fingers hit something mushy and her panic grew, until she realized it was only part of an old banana peel.

Even though her heart was wrenching a little laugh escaped her lips. She wiped her enraged eyes, wondering how she could laugh and cry at the same time. It was just so funny that a guy could be so deeply afraid of monkeys, yet ate almost as many bananas as they did.

There was a melted fragment of grappler line snagged through the belt loop. The moments when she first entered the burning hotel came back to her in a rush. She heard another grappler go off, and had assumed it was either one of them following. In hindsight, it would have to be Ron's, since Joss' was the newer, slimmer model that didn't go 'bang' every time it fired. A little glimmer of hope surged, realizing that perhaps the rest of Ron didn't go flying into the building, and Rufus, knowing better, would have been perched on his shoulder rather than end up flying through the air with his pants.

Another thing came to her. Ron hadn't put on his belt that morning. They had taken a quick shower and slipped into their clothes in the bathroom, and he had left the belt in the tight pair of jeans he had bought the day before, and they were sitting rolled up on a chair out in their room. Obviously he had been too lazy to put it on, or the pants wouldn't have ripped like that.

Balling the remains of his trousers up under her arm, she worked her way back through the people surrounding the emergency site. As quickly as the fire department was on the scene, maybe the two of them were pulled back before they could get into trouble like she almost was.

Scanning the crowd anew, she looked for a patch of corn-yellow hair. It didn't help that he really wasn't that especially tall, even though he had grown some six inches since that night at the prom. He had gone from kinda short to average, though he was half a head taller than she was. Then, off to one side she spotted a news truck. A reporter, with expertly highlighted and gelled hair was speaking into a camera. It was amazing how they could appear, perfectly coiffed like that at a moment's notice, especially considering it was a Middleton station doing the reporting. Either the crew was already nearby, or they had a local satellite newsroom.

Her heart leapt when she realized the reporter was trying to shove his microphone in a young woman's face. It looked like a scene she had seen many times on TV before, though always after the fact.

Joss was having just about as tough a time as she usually did getting away from the newsman during the middle of a sitch. She was frantically trying to see over the crowd, not having much luck considering she was only five foot four.

Then she picked up a certain voice over the din.

"I don't care. She's in there! We've got to do something." Ron's voice pleaded frantically from the other side of the pressing crowd.

Even though her lungs were still burning slightly from all the smoke she had inhaled, Kim cupped her hands over her mouth, the pants dropping to the ground. "RON!"

Joss heard her first, her face lighting up as she ran up to her, wrapping her arms around her.

"We thought you were a goner, Kim!"

"Whoa, can't…breath." She pried her cousin's arms from around her chest, taking big gulps of air that was still thick with smoke.

Ron finally pushed through the tangle of rubberneckers. "KP!" He rushed up, heedless of the fact that only his boxers were peeking out from underneath his old red jersey. He crushed her anew in his arms, kissing her soot smudged face over and over.

"I thought I lost you back there." They said in unison.

"I got out with a little girl before anything could collapse. Next thing I knew I was over by the ambulance." She glanced back at the building. It was no longer four stories high, the walls not quite two by then. The flames were no longer visible but just as much smoke was pouring from the ruins as before. The fire department kept up their aquatic assault, not giving it a chance to flare up again. It was only then she realized she had left the building on the far side, and neither of them had been able to see her escape.

"I'm sorry I couldn't be much help back there, KP, but I didn't have another hook in my pack and by that point the firemen were here."

"Don't let him tell ya he didn't do nothin, Kim. When he saw he couldn't help, he grabbed me and sent me into the other hotel over there to make sure everyone was getting out, jus' in case the fire spread."

Kim put her hand on Ron's cheek. "You still did good there, baby." She wrapped her arms around him and squeezed back. "Oh God I'd hate to lose you, especially on your birthday."

Ron held onto her, but loosened his grip just a bit so she could catch her breath. "It's gonna take a lot more than that for you to lose me, KP. Oh, before I forget…Jinx, you owe me a soda."

"I owe you so much more." She put her head against his shoulder, squeezing him anew.

The reporter was hovering nearby. He was looking at Joss, then at Kim, obviously confused, looking as if he didn't know who to try to interview first. It had to be a strange tableau. Two young women who looked like Kim Possible, with a guy standing there in his underwear. Finally he made up his mind, holding his microphone in Kim's face even though she was still holding onto Ron.

"Miss Possible, were you staying in the Cobblestone?"

"Uh, no, we're just up here on a short trip."

"What about the reports that you rescued a girl from the blaze?"

"Look, buddy, not now." Ron said, holding up his hand.

Not dissuaded in the least, the newsman went on, pushing the mike at Ron. "Was Team Possible called in to help with the rescue? How did you get here so quickly?"

"Look, we're not here a mission. We just happened to be in the right place at the right time." Kim said, breaking free from Ron and pulling his hand to get away from the prying reporter.

"Witnesses say they saw you fly into the building. How did you do that?"

"It's no big. That's the reason I carry my grappler with me. Now if you would excuse me, I'm on vacation with my _fiancé_." She added special emphasis on the last as she turned away from the newsman, taking Ron and Joss along with her as they filtered back through the crowd.

Once past the tangle of onlookers, Kim put her arm around Ron's shoulders. He put his own arm around her waist, supporting her, though she really didn't need it. People were still streaming in from just about everywhere to watch the inferno, so they were pretty much walking away from the crowd. Once they turned the corner back to where their car was parked, they were pretty much alone once more, with only the billowing clouds of smoke and steam left in their wake.

"Heard that everyone else got out alright." Joss said, following them a couple steps behind.

"Yeah. The paramedic said the same thing. That's so good news."

"Oh no." Ron said, brushing his hand over her hair.

"What?" She stopped and looked at him. He reached over her shoulder and pulled a lock of her hair up for her to see.

"It's singed."

She smiled at him. "It's okay. I needed a haircut anyway. Guess it'll take me that much longer till I have hair as long as Shego's"

"Ick. Why would you wanna look like her." Joss stuck her tongue out.

Kim chuckled slightly as they resumed their trek to the Cruiser. "Oh, not so much to look like Sherry. Ron thought I would look 'badical' with longer hair." She stopped at a storefront and looked in the reflection. "It needed shaping up anyway. No big." She tried to smile. She hadn't had it cut except some trimming since the day of their Junior Prom. In that time it had reached pretty much her backside, though it wasn't quite as full and bouncy as her former foe's. Instead it tapered to a thin point.

Letting her hair back down, she started walking once more. "It was full of split ends anyway and it takes too long to dry. Might even get it cut like Mom's"

"Yeah, 'cept that many more people will keep thinkin' I'm you, 'specially if you look just like Aunt Anne."

"You're right. Besides, Ronnie here would probably say something like 'sick and wrong' kissing somebody who looks like Mom."

"Hey, there's nothing wrong with Mom P. She's a beautiful woman. If I hadn't known her almost my whole life, I'd think she was your sister."

Kim punched him gently in the stomach. "That kind of comment cuts both ways, there, Ron. Mom's forty-six and I'm twenty-one. Are you saying I look _'old'_ enough to be her sister?"

"You know better than that, KP. You're the most beautilicious woman in the whole world."

"That's better." She opened the hatch of the car and pulled out his rolled up jeans. Unfurling them, she handed them to him.

Slipping his sneakers off, Ron stepped into them. "Sorry, Rufus old buddy, looks like you're out of a ride since we're all wearing jeans now."

The little guy shrugged, clinging to Ron's shoulder with his back claws. There were plenty of places for him to curl up and go to sleep in the Cruiser anyway.

"Hey, my wallet!" Ron pulled the old batter piece of leather from the back pocket of the jeans. It had seen better days, with the stitching coming loose in several places and most of the black finish worn off the outside. His Grandpa Rokowski had given it to him only months before he passed away and he would carry it until it completely fell apart. Kim had even given him a new one for his twentieth birthday and it was still sitting in his nightstand (at their apartment) unused.

"Guess you were too lazy to take it out last night when we got ready for bed, huh?" Joss snickered, looking for another chance to lay into the two for getting frisky earlier that morning.

"No, that was his plan." Kim said, smirking.

"My plan? Oh, right, my plan. Yeah, always keep it in a safe place, just in case we get into a sitch where I could lose it."

"Yup." Joss said flatly, not buying a word of it.

Kim leaned on the roof of the car. "So, birthday boy. Still up for a train ride? We can always call home and tell them a sitch came up, which would be the truth."

Ron wrinkled his nose. "Nah, I think I've had enough smoke and steam to last a while." He pulled the edge of his shirt up. "Besides, we all smell like a campfire and it looks like you've been rolling around in an ash pan."

Kim looked at her reflection again. The old blouse had seen better days, but now it was slightly torn and it was covered in black soot. One of the loose laces at the collar was partially melted and there were more than a couple tiny burns where coals had landed on it. Her jeans were in just about as bad shape. The glass had not cut her skin, but it had scored the outer layers of the fabric in several places and they were just as dirty as her top. "Looks like both of us are coming away without some of our favorite clothes, baby."

"Aw man, my pants! I forgot to go look for them!"

Kim shook her head. "Sorry, they're DOA."

"But KP, they're my best pair!"

Chuckling softly as she unlocked the passenger door, Kim chided, "The only thing good about those old rags were when you were in them."

"Or out a them." Joss added, getting in the back.

Kim growled softly. If they had to put up with her about the whole ride back home…

That thought was cut off as a man in his mid-thirties came running up to them. He stopped, leaning on his knees for a moment before speaking. "Are…you…Kim Possible?" he finally gasped out.

"Yes sir."

She found herself in yet another crushing hug "Oh, Thank-you-thank-you-thank-you! I don't know how I can ever repay you!"

"Um, that's okay. Need to breath."

"I'm going to tell everyone when I get home. I've already talked to that reporter back there about how you saved Dawn. If there's anything, anything I can do."

It suddenly occurred to her that it must have been his daughter she saved from the burning building. "Really, it's no big. Helping people is what we do. Anyone would have done something if they could."

"My daughter is going to be so happy! She got to be saved by Teen Hero Kim Possible. She's one of your biggest fans already!"

"We're just glad she's okay."

"Oh, by the way." Ron interrupted. "Kim's not exactly a teen any more. We're both twenty one now."

"Wow. It seems like just yesterday when all that mess with the robots happened. Guess I've always just thought of you as being in high school. You certainly don't look twenty-one."

Kim beamed. It was the first time in quite a while anyone, including Ron, had paid her that kind of compliment. It was funny how she spent her teen years wanting to be grown up and treated like an adult, only to turn a complete one-eighty once she reached that point.

The man reached into his pocket, producing a card. "Here, I mean it. If there's anything you need, I'll do whatever's in my power to get it for you. I live in Middleton myself, so please, just name it."

"Really, sir, knowing little Dawn is safe is thanks enough. It's not like we take payment…"

"KP." Ron tapped her on her shoulder.

"Just a minute Ron. We'll head on out in a little bit."

"But KP."

"Don't be rude, Ron."

"Kim, look." He took the business card from her hands and held it closer to her face.

She read the card. It was a very simple white card with the business name, as well as the gentleman's name with an address and phone numbers. Then she realized what had caught Ron's eye. "You work for an apartment complex?" Kim asked.

"Well, it's more like I own them, some, well, quite a few. We're one of the largest housing companies in the Tri-City area."

Ron leaned over Kim's shoulder, grinning. "You wouldn't happen to have a nice place available near the college, would you?"

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Kim Possible and all related characters © Disney


	22. Part XXII

**_Where You Hang Your Hat: _Part XXII**

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Ron fluffed out the sheet over the bed, letting it settle perfectly in place before tucking the end of it under the mattress. With a practiced hand he finished it off with hospital corners, just like Kim's Mom did at her house. Neither of them actually made the bed very often, but since this was the first time in their new apartment, he was going to do it right.

Next he got the thick pink comforter out of the cardboard box. Kim had been sleeping under that particular cover for many years, as he had for most of the last few months. It was only a little longer they would have to sleep under it.

The room looked pretty sparse. Unlike the previous place, it was a proper bedroom. It had a large, triple paned window, but there were already blinds up there. It afforded them a view of the picturesque boulevard leading to the campus, with the old buildings visible when the blinds were drawn. The walls were still bare, painted a sort of eggshell color, making the room look a little larger than it was. In reality is was just a touch smaller than their room at Kim's house, but at least it was home.

Their home.

Part of the reason the room looked so spartan was their furniture, or more accurately, their lack of it. Later in the week they would be able to go down to a warehouse and claim the bulk of their belongings that had been removed from the loft was Middleton Mills. Kim had been in a pretty good snit for a while over that, but at least her parents had allowed them to borrow enough furniture to get by for the time being. Even so, the room looked pretty empty with just the small bed, a student desk, two round nightstands and a chest-of-drawers.

Kim walked out of the closet. If there was one good thing about moving into a relatively new building, it was the fact they didn't scrimp on storage space. It was wide and deep, with built in drawers and hanging spaces for more clothes than the two of them owned together.

Wade followed her out, packing away his laser measuring device. "I'll get with the maintenance people first thing tomorrow morning. I think I can have a proper vault installed in there in just a couple days."

"Spankin." If there had been one problem they couldn't overcome at their old place (save for the fact the building was now going to be torn down) it was there was no good way to install a storage vault for their battle-suits. Kim had learned the hard way that they had to keep them under lock and key, having dealt with one being stolen in the past.

"Do you want me to install the satellite feed tomorrow?" He asked. Wade worked part-time for the Space Center and had taken several days off to help them settle in.

"Please and thank you."

Ron finished fluffing the pillows and pulled the box full of bed linens into the corner. It would only be a few days before he had to do it all over again, but at least they would be able to sleep in a comfortably familiar bed.

Kim came back into the room after seeing their friend out. The rest of the apartment was even emptier looking, with a pair of plastic chairs and a folding card table serving as their dining set. The home center was supposed to be by later to deliver their new refrigerator. The last one had come with the apartment and the only furnishings this one had was a cook-top and over built in. Until it was up and running, they couldn't even go by the store to stock up on food. It wasn't like they would want the old fridge anyway, especially after sitting for two weeks with the power turned off. Ron turned green even thinking about the meat that had been in that freezer.

Kim sat down in the middle of the carpeted floor, leaning back on her arms while looking out the window. They hadn't looked at the particular building they had moved into before, mainly because it was so close to the campus they assumed it would be another one of the tiny 'kiddie condos' that peppered the properties surrounding Middleton College. In fact, the unit they were in wasn't even listed, having only become available recently.

She felt a little guilty about calling in a favor like that so quickly, but considering the way their luck had been running, Ron insisted they were due. The apartment was kind of small, being only about two-thirds of the floor space of the loft, but what it lacked in space, it made up for with spectacular views from just about every window. They might be bumping into each other often once all their furniture was there, but for the moment she thought it was pleasantly cozy. It would certainly do until their townhouse was ready late the next summer.

The owner kept insisting they take the space gratis, but Kim wouldn't hear of any such thing. She called the dept paid in full simply because he pointed them to the place. In the end, however, he did cut them a good deal on the lease, which was a little pricey to begin with, but not out of Ron's reach. He also made a concession that the lease would be for one year, instead of three like the property normally called for. That was in place to create a sense of stability, since it was supposed to be nicer than the other apartments in the neighborhood.

It had everything they needed and wanted. There were two bedrooms, each opening into the single large bathroom. There was only one sink, but the tub was a more comfortable, modern oval design they both could comfortably sit in, if not completely submerge. When they claimed the rest of their furniture, they would move her old bed into the other room…ostensibly 'her' room since they were technically referring to each other as 'roommates' in certain circles. There was a little wink-and-nod involved with that, but it satisfied certain old-fashioned types like Kim's Nana.

Their actions in Durango had another lucky effect. Once again Kim was being hailed on the news as the hero, instead of them focusing on her living arrangements. There was also plenty of coverage of Ron, and perhaps for the first time, her cousin was mentioned by name.

Joss was a happier young woman of late. The weekend after the Durango trip she decided to go out with Bobby again, with the understanding that she was the one calling the shots when it came to the romantic parts of the date. It was rather ironic that she came home, reporting to Kim that they once again drove out to the bluff at the end of Logging Camp Road. This time she bragged about just how good they guy could kiss. Actually, it was more like gushing. Kim was able to get a couple more details from her cousin than her Mom could (Kim's Dad was not party to any of those discussions) and smiled gently as she offered a little warning to her. The younger woman was already referring to the boy as her 'boyfriend' and was going on and on about how great it was going to be having most of her classes with him.

James Possible's attitude about the boy improved greatly once he came in and introduced himself before the date. He never knew about Joss' blowup that night, and considering how things were going, didn't need to. He even went so far as to extend her curfew until midnight, though once school started, it would be back to ten when she had to get up for classes the next morning.

Putting the last of the squabble behind them, Kim invited Joss to spend the night at their apartment once everything was squared away. It looked like they would just have time to do that, right before the High School went back into session. Her younger cousin mentioned something about bringing Bobby along to see the place, but she was only playing Kim.

Ron sat down cross-legged behind Kim, kneading her shoulders. "I'm a little upset we don't have a fireplace, you know. I was looking forward to building up a nice one in that other place come winter."

"Yeah. Kinda funny having a home without one. Especially here in Colorado."

"Eh, maybe it's for the better. You never know when some goof will forget to close the screen, and next thing you know, poof, no building."

"No kidding." She tossed her hair a couple times, still getting used to it being back like she wore it as a teen. Ron had the goofiest smile on her face when she came out of the salon later that day. To him it was like having the old Kim back, the one he fell in love with. Still, she told him that she was starting over, so she would have plenty of hair to put up in a complicated bun for their wedding.

The remainder of Ron's birthday had been interesting. For it to be his special day, the greater part of the afternoon was spent doing stuff for Kim. Just before they got on the highway, Joss spotted a small shopping center. It was roughly half the size of the Middleton Mall, but still boasted the most important thing; a Club Banana. Kim emerged from the changing room in a brand new pair of periwinkle capris and a snug, lime green crop top. It was like fifteen year old Kim had stepped out of a time machine, though Ron couldn't hustle her to the shoe store quick enough to get her out of those detestable purple shoes.

They had what must have been the first family dinner ever where Jim and Tim weren't behaving like a couple of monkeys. Gene and Jean came along, as well as the twin's girlfriends, so they ended up crowding around a single large table in the center of the Italian eatery. There was lots of laughter, especially when both Kim and Ron were carded when all the adults ordered pitchers of Italian style sangria. Gene made the statement that Kim was likely going to have to prove her age right up into her thirties. That didn't bother her one bit.

Not everything went off quite as she had planned that evening. By her third glass of the wine-based punch, she had slipped out of her dressy sandals and was running her toes up the leg of Ron's new slacks. He almost tried to wear his old gray cargo pants which used to serve as his mission gear, but Kim insisted everyone dress up a little bit. For probably the first time in his life he was wearing Club Banana from head to toe, excepting his shoes.

The problem was she lost track of exactly how much of the delicious concoction she drank. Even though it was with a rather large meal, she was quite wobbly on her feet as they climbed up to their room about midnight. He intention was to be a little out of control with Ron, who had nursed a single glass himself throughout the entire meal, drinking lots of water instead. She ducked behind her old changing screen, putting on a nighty that was most def only to be seen by Ron.

She slipped across the room, trying to be seductive, but only managed to trip on her own feet, stumbling most of the way to the bed, laughing her head off in the process. Pulling back the covers, she snuggled up to him, kissing and licking his neck.

Kim woke up the next morning in the very same position, having fallen into a deep sleep right there. Plus, as had happened before when she had a little too much to drink, she was in no condition for any kind of romance that following morning. Her 'little wake-up call' consisted of four ibuprofens, a glass of water and a nice long hot bath alone. She came to the inescapable conclusion that alcohol was not her friend, and what good was losing control, even at the right time if she wasn't likely to remember it?

"That feels so ferociously good." Kim moaned as Ron worked her shoulders.

"You always said it's a good thing I've got such big hands."

She sat up and turned around, leaning over him. Their lips met and for a long time they sat like that on the floor, just simply kissing. Finally, she pulled back and nuzzled her cheek against his.

"Please tell me I'm not going to wake up and find out this is just a dream. Tell me we finally have a place to call our home."

"This is it, KP. Though, like Dad always says, home is just where you hang your hat."

"You don't exactly wear hats, Ronnie." She touched the tip of his nose. "Though you did look so cute in that folk dancing hat that Norwegian couple made you put on."

He shuddered slightly. He knew something had happened to them in the past, something that had been erased from time. Some months ago, all those memories were restored when he touched the Tempus Simia idol, right before it was stolen from the Tri-City museum. Only, like a dream, those memories faded once more, until they were more feeling than actual recollections of actual events. Maybe it was since, in a way, none of it had ever really happened. All he could recall by then was that something major, something bad had been averted…

…that, and he really, really hated meat cakes.

Kim got up in her knees, reaching for Ron's hands. "We're about to forget something."

"Huh?" He cocked his head as she pulled him to his feet.

Instead of answering right away, she wrapped her arms around his shoulders, pressing her entire body up against his. The kiss she gave him literally made his toes curl. Slowly, she started steering him toward the bed.

"Hey! I just made that." He protested as she sat down, pulling him along with her. She lay back, letting him rest partially on top of her.

"We'll make it again…later." She breathed, pulling his shirt tail up. "We're home." She said at last, slipping under the fresh sheets as she pulled his top up over his head.

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Kim Possible and all related characters © Disney


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